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t,BLOOD OF JESUS. 



*Jfc 



BY 



KEY. WILLIAM REID, 



ID1NBURGU 




2V 





PUBLISHED BY THE 

American Tract Society, 

2 S Corn ii ill, Bostox. 




THE 



BLOOD OF JESUS. 



BY 



THE REV. WILLIAM REID, 



EDINBURGH 



" Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest 
by the blood of Jesus."— Heb. x. 19. 




PUBLISHED BY THE 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 
28 Cornhill, Boston. 



J 



at* 



This little work, from the press of Messrs. Msbet & Co., of 
London, is republished by this Society, as containing a very 
full and rich exhibition of the doctrine of salvation by the 
cross of Christ. There are in it a few forms or modes of ex- 
pression not common in this country for which it is preferred 
that the excellent author should alone be held responsible. 
In one or two instances, a word or phrase which seemed not 
likely to be understood by the American reader has been 
6lightly changed. 



Gto. C. Rand 8f Avery, Stereotj/pers and Printer*, 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 
Introductory, * § 

CHAPTER II. 
Forgiveness of Sins through the Blood of Jesus,. ,29 



CHAPTER III. 

How our Sins are taken away by the Blood of 
Jesus, 36 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Blood of Jesus, not Conviction of Sin, the 
Foundation of our Peace and Joy, 46 



CHAPTER V. 
A Letter about the Blood of Jesus, 52 

CHAPTER VI. 

Salvation through the Blood of Jesus, the Gift 
of God, 57 

III 



IV CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VII. 

The Blood of Jesus our only Ground of Peace 
with God, 68 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Regeneration through the Blood of Jesus, 82 

CHAPTER IX. 

Faith in the Blood of Jesus Essential to Salva- 
tion, 94 

CHAPTER X. 

The Blood of Jesus the Believer's Life and 
Peace, 103 

CHAPTER XI. 

Faith in the Blood of Jesus the Spring of Holi- 
ness, MIS 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Blood of Jesus the Essence of the Gospel,. .122 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Holy Spirit's Testimony to the Blood of 
Jesus, ....... .... ,1S2 




THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



HAVE been religiously inclined from 

my earliest years. When quite little, 

I was wont to say my prayers many 

times over ; for I had heard it said 

- (s that every thing done on earth was 

written down in heaven, and I wished to 

have as much as possible recorded there in 

my favor. 

" When about ten years of age, I hear4 
that there were soiue who did not believe 
that the Bible was the Word of God, and 
|hat led me to surmise that it was not suf- 
ficiently clear that it was from God ; for if 
he had given a revelation of his mind to 



6 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

man, it must have come in such a form 
that it would have been impossible for any 
person to disbelieve in it. I pictured to 
myself that if God chose to do it, he could 
put up in great letters along the heavens, 
'I am the Lord/ and every body would see 
it and believe ; and if the Bible were from 
him, its revelation would be so unmistak- 
ably clear, that it would be impossible to 
doubt its divine origin. 

" But this was not a settled conviction ; 
and my incipient skepticism was suddenly 
dissipated by a dream. I thought that I 
felt an intense heat, and so terrible did it 
ultimately become that the heavens were 
rent asunder and wrapt in flames, and in 
the burning sky overhead I saw in large 
letters of fire, ' I am the Lord ; ' but I had 
at the same time a conviction that it was 
now too late for the persons who had been 
unbelieving to profit by it, and those who 
had not believed the Bible, speaking to 
them in the name of the Lord, would now 
find to their everlasting misery that it was 
true. 

" Not having enjoyed an early training 



INTR OD UCTOR Y. 7 

in Bible truth, I had many difficulties in 
reference to the doctrines of revelation. 
and especially regarding that of the Trini- 
ty. I could not comprehend whether God 
and Christ were one or two beings ; and I 
was too timid at the age of twelve to ask 
my seniors. 

" When at school, I was deeply impressed 
with the solemnity and propriety of daily 
worship, and fervently wished, on return- 
ing home, to be able to have family wor- 
ship ; but my timidity was stronger than 
my convictions, and it was not attempted. 
Having no Christian friend to give me 
counsel, direction, and encouragement, my 
religious impressions by and by evaporated, 
and my character was left very much to 
the formative power of surrounding cir- 
cumstances. But having been instructed 
when at -school in a neighboring town in 
what was right, and counseled, on leaving 
it, by a Christian lady of the town, as to 
how I ought to conduct myself on my re- 
turn home, and being put in a responsible 
situation, I felt a moral weight upon my 
spirit, and gravitated towards the good, the 
right, and the true. 



8 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

" I was much given to reading, and from 
having abundance of the choicest books of 
a historical and literary character, I was 
permitted to gratify my taste. The acqui- 
sition of information was my great aim. 
I had an ardent thirst for knowledge ; and 
every species of works, with the exception 
of light literature, for which I had a settled 
contempt, was devoured by me both day 
and night. Solid literature suited my dis- 
position, and I stored my mind with useful 
information on a variety of subjects. I was 
once so engrossed with books, that when 
about fifteen years old I left off going to 
church, that I might have the quiet of the 
Lord's day for reading. But this I soon 
discovered to be very wrong, and it was 
discontinued. 

" In the course of years I became ac- 
quainted with the most evangelical minis- 
ter in the town where I resided ; and I 
left an eloquent preacher, whose discourses 
were to me only ' a very lovely song,' and 
attended the ministry of the gospel of 
the grace of God. This very materially 
changed the current of my thinking and 



I2?TR0DUCT0RY. 9 

the kind of my reading. Being naturally 
susceptible of religious impressions, I be- 
came serious, devout, and religious. I car- 
ried my thirst for knowledge with me into 
my religion, and I searched the Scriptures 
and read religious books with an earnest- 
ness and constancy which were absorbing. 
I got Fleetwood's ' Life of Christ ' and read 
it many times ; and so engrossing was it 
that I sometimes sat reading it until two 
or three o'clock in the morning, without 
weariness. The circumstances in which I 
was Irving, and the trials which thickened 
over my path, were no doubt instrumental 
in sobering my buoyant spirits and throw- 
ing me upon a course of religious duty. 

"From the instructions of the pulpit, 
and my own reading, I soon became, in 
some measure, acquainted with the system 
of Christian doctrine ; and believing that I 
was a real Christian because I knew about 
Christian truth and Christian experience, 
and had a liking for all that was good, I 
thought it was my duty to join myself to 
the church. I was quite able to answer all 
the questions that were put to me, for I was 



10 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

not asked, Are you born again ? I was ad- 
mitted, and, as a member, received the 
Lord's Supper regularly. Even at that 
time I walked a considerable distance every 
Lord's day to attend a prayer-meeting at 
eight o'clock in the morning ; but it was 
all ' works,' for I felt as if I were acquiring 
extraordinary merit by the performance of 
this extraordinary duty. I had a real pleas- 
ure in doing well. After this I attended 
a Bible class, and prepared so thoroughly 
for it that I was able to outshine all the 
rest in my knowledge of the subjects which 
were submitted for our consideration. In 
order the more thoroughly to master the 
contents of the Scriptures, and satisfy my 
own mind, I set to reading the Bible with 
a commentary ; and after having read it 
with one commentary, I got another, and 
perused it with the most assiduous earnest- 
ness and perseverance. With these helps 
I passed many hours in searching the 
Scriptures, and enjoyed it more than any 
thing else ; but it was from no love to God 
himself, but simply to acquire information. 
I do not remember that I had a spiritual 



II 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

sense of sin, either before becoming a 
church-member, or for a number of years 
after doing so, and consequently I read the 
Bible more with my intellect than with my 
conscience and my heart. I wanted 'by 
searching ' to c find out God,' ignorant of 
the fact that he can be known only through 
our spiritual necessities. I saw the truth, 
as I believed, clearly enough, but never 
having been really convinced that I was an 
utterly lost "sinner, I had never prayed from 
the heart, ' Lord, save me, I perish ! ' 

" But in course of years I became less 
satisfied with my religion and with myself ; 
but when unhappy I did not go direct to 
Jesus, but, on the contrary, I tried to read 
myself right, or pray myself right, or work 
myself right, and for a time I succeeded. 
I was most strict in all my deportment, 
conscientious and exemplary ; and having 
a factitious conscience, I felt miserable if 1 
failed any day to read a good deal, or per- 
form other duties. Morning calls often 
annoyed me, proving, as they frequently 
did, an interruption in my round of pre- 
scribed duty ; and when I met with agree- 



12 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

able, intelligent friends, and went thor- 
oughly into their conversation, I forgot all 
about divine things ; and when I was left 
to myself again, after a time of forgetful- 
ness of God, I sometimes felt that I had a 
tremendous leeway to make up, and I set 
about doing it with all my might. When 
thus drawn away from religion, I would 
sometimes have a protracted season of for- 
getfulness of God, but it was generally fol- 
lowed by a season of conflict, remorse, 
struggling, and persevering penance. To 
keep up a religion on my plan was a very 
difficult matter, and very unsatisfactory. 
When I did well, read well, and stored up 
scripture truth in my mind, did my duty 
as a Sunday-school teacher, tract-distrib- 
utor, and district-visitor, and was suffi- 
ciently earnest, 1 felt myself all right ; but 
if I failed in duty, I continued miserable. 

" Being perfectly sincere and conscien- 
tious, consistent in my conduct, and con- 
sidered truly pious by myself and others, 
I waded on through this legal mire for 
many years ; and it never occurred to me 
that there must be a radical defect about 



INTRODUCTORY. 1 



r> 



my religion. My heart was unsatisfied ; 
my conscience, when in any measure awak- 
ened, was silenced by duty, but not satisfied 
by righteousness, nor purged from dead I 
works by the blood of the Righteous One. t 
My error was in believing that religion con- 
sisted in knowing, apart from realizing ; 
and my conscience not being spiritually 
aroused, I persevered in my delusion for 
about a dozen of years. I believe now that 
there was one error which I committed, 
which tended more than any thing to keep 
me in my unhappy condition : I consid- 
ered my prayers so utterly unworthy to be 
presented to God, that instead of throwing 
myself in all my sinfulness and unworthi- 
ness before the throne of grace, and getting 
into immediate contact with the God of sal-; 
vation, I employed exclusively the prayers'-, 
of others. I frequently used ejaculatory ; 
prayers of my own throughout the course 
of the day ; but when I came before God 
formally, I felt so utterly unworthy and un- 
able to order my speech before him, that I 
was always constrained to use the language 
of others ; for, praying being regarded as 



14 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

a meritorious duty, I felt that it must be 
done well in order to be accepted, and I 
feared to commit myself to a lengthened 
address to the Divine Majesty. The Holy 
Ghost would have helped my infirmities, 
and made intercession within me, but I 
had not the most remote conception that I 
might, by a believing glance of my eye 
toward heaven, secure his gracious aid ; 
and so, instead of ' praying in the Holy 
Ghost,' I prayed merely in the words of 
my fellow- men, which sometimes met my 
condition, but more frequently did not, and 
always seemed to keep me at a distance 
from God, and from enjoying direct per- 
sonal intercourse with ' the Father of mer- 
cies,' 2 Cor. i. 3. 

" In the unsatisfactory manner which I 
have just described, I wasted and lost my 
young years, ' and was nothing bettered, 
but rather grew worse,' Mark v. 26. I had 
been religious, dutiful, and consistent ; but 
it had been a mere going about to estab- 
lish my own righteousness, for my sys- 
tem of service ignored the central fact of 
Divine revelation, — that ' Christ Jesus 



INTR'OL UCTOR Y. 15 

came into the world to save sinners J 1 Tim. 
i. 15. 'But God, who is rich in mercy,' 
Eph. ii. 4, had compassion on me, and by 
the grace of his Holy Spirit, ' revealed his 
Son in me,' Gal. i. 16, and turned \ the 
shadow of death into the morning,' Amos 
v. 8. The first gleam of gospel light 
which entered my darkened mind was in 
reading a little tract in which Luther's 
conversion is referred to. When the words 
of the Creed, ' I believe in the forgiveness 
of sins,' were pronounced in his hearing, 
he took them up and repeated them on 
his bed of sickness ; but he was told he 
must believe not only in the forgiveness of 
David's sins or Peter's sins, but that he 
must believe in the forgiveness of his own 
sins. This truth became the inlet of par- 
don and peace to his soul ; and on reading 
it, I felt that my soul was being visited 
with celestial light, and I was led to see 
that pardon of sin was a present and per- 
sonal blessing. But I was not satisfied 
that I believed aright. 

" Shortly after, I was reading Romaine's 
' Life of Faith,' and came upon this senti- 



16 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

ment : That the weakest believer is as 
precious to Christ and as safe as the strong- 
est. The day-spring from on high visited 
me, and, by and by, I felt myself bathed in 
the noon-tide radiance of Heaven's glorious 
light. The great Enliglitener filled my 
soul with his transforming presence. He 
who commanded the light to shine out of 
darkness had shined in my heart, ' to give 
the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
G-od in the face of Jesus Christ.' I was 
conscious of a divine Presence with me, 
and believed that the holy light which had 
entered my soul came direct from heaven. 
Christ from that moment became the great 
central object of my contemplation. Imme- 
diately that I became enlightened, Jesus 
appeared to be the center, sum, and es- 
sence of revelation, and with him as a key, 
I thought I could understand all that ever 
was written on the subject of religion. My 
spirit rejoiced in God my Saviour, and self 
and its services were thought of only to be 
condemned as utterly vile and worthless. 
Christ was all. And as my soul was filled 
with divine light, and glowing with the love 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

of Jesus, I said to myself, as, in amaze- 
ment, I remembered the dreary past, — 
6 How could I have been so blind as not to 
see the way of salvation when it is so clear- 
ly revealed that Jesus Christ is all and in 
all, and we are complete in him — not 
in him and our own doings combined — 
but in him alone ? The truth is as clear 
as the sun at noon-day, that Jesus is him- 
self the Sin-Bearer and the Saviour, and I 
and my legal duties and conscientious pen- 
ances are nothing but " filthy rags." I 
have read it a hundred times that Jesus 
came to seek and to save that which was 
lost, and the same truth runs through the 
whole Word of God, and yet I never saw it 
until now. Oh, how blind I have been^to 
the glory of Jesus ! How sad to think that 
I have read so much about him with the 
veil upon my heart, and have never seen 
his glory as a Saviour till this blessed 
hour ! ' I now wished that every one 
could see the Lord as I saw him. I won- 
dered that they did not, and I thought I 
could point him out to them so clearly and 
distinctly, as made of God unto us 'wis- 



18 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

dom, and righteousness, and sanctification, 
and redemption/ that it would be impos- 
sible for them not to believe in him, receive 
him as theirs, and be filled with heavenly 
joy; but I found that 4 old Adam was 
too strong for young Mclancthon.' 

" About this time I heard a sermon 
which I wished t© get good from ; but the 
minister was drawing to a close, and I had 
found nothing in all he had said to satisfy 
my soul, when as a concluding sentence he 
repeated the words, ' Christ is the end of 
J the law for righteousness to every one that 
' believeth,' Rom. x. 4 ; and that was borne 
in upon my soul with much power of the 
Holy Ghost, so that I again found my heart 
filled with the light, life, and love of God. 
How clearly it appeared to me that Christ 
had in my stead satisfied all the demands 
v of the law ! He had filled it up with his 
satisfaction from one end to the other : for 
thus I understood his being ' the end of the 
law.' He has abolished the law as a 
ground of justification, by fulfilling every 
one of its many demands ; and he allows us 
to begin life with a righteousness as perfect 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

as if we had fulfilled perfectly in our own 
persons every iota that the law of God 
exacts. I had no idea of this during my 
years of bondage ; and the consequence 
was, that in my blindness I presumptu- 
ously set about doing that which Christ 
had done for me, and which, had I gone 
on for ever in the same legal track, I never 
could have done for myself. When one's 
eyes are opened by the Holy Ghost, how 
monstrous does it seem for the sinful crea- 
ture to have been attempting to work out 
a righteousness which could be effected 
only by the Creator ! ' Christ is the end 
of the law for righteousness to every one 
that believeth,' and, believing in Jesus, I 
found that, instead of needing to begin to 
fulfill the law for myself, I was privileged 
to begin at ' the end of the law.' Instead 
of looking forward to being able to com- 
plete the fulfillment, I found that (on be- 
lieving in Jesus) what I fancied would be 
the termination of a life of obedience I 
had now presented to me in the gospel of 
Christ as the point from which I was to^ 
start. Ta get Christ in a moment as my 



20 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

perfect righteousness, after going about for 
the best part of my past life to establish a 
righteousness of my own, on account of 
which I had vainly thought to render my- 
self acceptable to God, that was to me ' as 
life from the dead,' Rom. xi. 15." 

Is that my oivn experience ? No ; it is 
not mine, but the experience of another, 
which, having been submitted to me when 
about to write this preface, I considered so 
suitable that I have written it out, and 
given it as one of the most satisfactory rea- 
sons I could present for issuing the present 
little volume. There can be no doubt but 
there are many cases like the above. I 
fear that not a few of the strictly religious 
in all our churches are ignorant of the 
" true grace of God," 1 Pet. v. 12, which 
gives Jesus as " the end of the law for 
righteousness to every one that believeth." 
I fear also that, in some cases, on account 
of a mixture of law and gospel in public 
instruction, inquirers are left with the im- 
pression that they have something to do in 
order to obtain "justification of life," Rom, 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

v. 18. And when we consider the hun- 
dreds of thousands who are being awakened 
by the Holy Ghost throughout our own and 
other lands, I believe that we could not en- 
gage in a more needful service than the 
preparation of a work such as the present, 
wherein " the righteousness of God without 
the law is manifested, even the righteous- 
ness of God by faith of Jesus Christ unto 
all and upon all them that believe," Rom. 
iii. 21, 22. We sometimes hear "the 
claims of Jesus" pressed upon sinners; 
but this is to confound Christ with Moses, 
and represent his salvation as only an 
amended republication of the law " given 
by Moses," forgetting that "grace and 
truth came by Jesus Christ," John i. 17, 
" The gospel, strictly taken, contains nei 
ther 'claims,' commands, nor threatenings/ 

*Thia is stated in a form liable to be misunderstood. We 
should prefer to say that, while there are claims, commands, 
and threatenings uttered and urged by the Saviour Himself, 
they are not just what the sinner needs at that stage of his 
experience where, awakened by "the claims and commands 
of Christ," which he has refused to acknowledge, and alarmed 
by the awful threatenings falling from those merciful nps, he 
is ready to receive a love of which he is utterly unworthy, and 
a salvation to which he has no claim. In that state, ready to 
gire all to Christ, he should be taught that Christ stands wait- 
lug to give all to the sinner s — Ed, 



m 



22 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

but is glad tidings of salvation to sinful 
men through Christ, revealed in doctrines 
and promises ; and these revealed to men 
as sinners, stout-hearted, and far from 
righteousness. In the good neios from 
heaven, of help in God through Jesus 
Christ, for lost, self-destroyed creatures of 
Adam's race, there are no precepts.* All 
these, the command to believe and repent 
not excepted, belong to and flow from the 
law.f The gospel is the report of a peace 
purchased by the blood of Christ for poor 
sinners, and offered to them. J The gospel 
brings a sound of liberty to captives, of 
pardon to condemned criminals, of peace 
to rebels, a sound of life to the dead, and 
of salvation to them that lie on the borders 
of hell and condemnation^ It is not, in- 
deed, the gospel of itself, but Christ re- 

* The author can not mean that Christ makes no require* 
ments in the gospel, for he says, " Ye are my friends if ye do 
whatsoever I command you." John xv. 14. It is to be under- 
stood only that no works are commanded as a ground of par- 
don. Obedience to Christ is required as a fruit of love and 
an evidence of discipleship. " He that hath my command' 
ments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." John xiv. 
21, — En. 

t Representees' Answers to Queries. % Boston . 

§ Ebenczer E -skiae. 



INTRODUCTORY. 23 

vealed therein, that heals the sinner. It is 
Christ that is to be received ; but he is re- 
ceived as offered in the gospel, and the gos- 
pel holds out Christ to the eye of faith. 
The gospel is with respect to Christ what 
the pole was with respect to the serpent."* 
The gospel does not therefore urge upon 
us claims which we can not comply with, 
but it places before us the free grace of 
God in Christ Jesus, and permits us to 
claim the Son of God as our Redeemer, 
and through him to enjoy "all things" 
pertaining to the life of faith and the hope 
of glory. We are asked t& give God noth- 
ing for salvation. He is the great giver. 
Our proper position is to stand before him 
as beggars in the attitude of receiving, 
" He that spared not his own Son, but de- 
livered him up for us all, how shall he not 
with him also freely give us all things ? " 
Rom. vih. 32. 

The gospel of the grace of God does not 
consist in pressing the duty defined by the 
words, " Give your heart to Christ," al- 
though that is often unwisely pressed upou 



24 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

inquirers after salvation as if it were the 
gospel ; but the very essence of the gospel 
is contained in the words, " Having liberty 
to enter into the holiest by the Blood op 
Jesus, by a new and living way, which he 
hath consecrated for us, through the vail, 
that is to say, his flesh ; and having an 
high priest over the house of God ; let us 
draw near with a true heart in full assur- 
ance of faith," Heb. x. 19-22. 

" Give your heart to Christ," is rather 
law than gospeh It is most proper that it 
should be done, for God himself demands 
it ; but merely urging the doing of it is far 
short of the gospel. The true gospel is, 
Accept the free gift of salvation from wrath 
and sin by receiving Jesus himself, and all 
the benefits he purchased with " his own 
blood/' Acts xx. 28, and your heart will be 
his in a moment, being given to him, not 
as a matter of law, but of love ; for, if you 
have the love of his heart poured into yours 
by his blessed Spirit, you will feel yourself 
under the constraining influence of a spon- 
taneous spiritual impulse to give him in 
return your heart, and all that you possess, 



INTRODUCTORY, 25 

It is right to give him your heart, but un- 
less you first receive his, you will never 
give him yours. 

The design of the following pages is to 
exhibit the true grace of God " without 
the works of the law," and only by the 
blood of Jesus. Our great aim is the 
glory of Christ in the conversion of souls ; 
and the means employed to accomplish that 
end are simple statements concerning the 
great Scripture truth, that we are saved at 
once, entirely, and for ever, by the grace 
of God " who is rich in mercy," and that 
we have no part at all in the matter of our 
salvation save the beggar's part, of accept- 
ing it as a free gift, procured for us by 
" the precious blood of Christ," 1 Pet. i. 
19. And, as many are struggling to get 
up something of their own as a price to 
bring to God to buy salvation of him, we 
have taken pains to show the entire useless- 
ness of all such efforts ; and have pointed 
out, we think, with some degree of clear- 
ness, and by a variety of ways, that all true 
religion has a distinct beginnings and that 
that beginning dates from the time when a 



26 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

sinner stands at Calvary, conscious of his 
utterly ruined condition, and realizes the 
truth that Jesus so completely satisfied 
God for sin, that he could say before he 
gave up the ghost, " It is finished," John 
xi. 80 ; so that " we have redemption 
through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, 
according to the riches of his grace," Eph. 
i. 7. " He his own self bare our sins in 
his own body on the tree," 1 Pet. ii. 24 ; 
and thereby, " having made peace by the 
blood of his cross," Col. i. 20, we may at 
once be " made nigh by the blood of 
Christ," Eph. ii. 13, without any thing of 
our own. That God who hath set him 
forth, " a propitiation through faith in his 
blood, to declare his righteousness," Rom. 
iii. 25, in pardoning sin, will pardon all sin 
through faith in him ; for his own testimony 
is, that " the blood of Jesus Christ his Son 
cleanseth us from all sin," 1 John i. 7. 

The blood of Jesus is the ground of 
peace with God to every believing sinner 
below, and it will be the subject of the 
everlasting song of the redeemed above. 
It is our all for acceptance with God, for 



INTRODUCTORY. 27 

pardon of sin, for " justification of life," 
for adoption into God's family, for holiness 
and glory. As the altar with its streaming- 
blood stood at the very entrance of the an- 
cient tabernacle, so the Lord Jesus Christ 
and u the blood of his cross " meet us at 
the very entrance of the church of the re- 
deemed. The blood-shedding of Jesus as 
" a propitiation for our sins," 1 John ii. 2, 
lies at the very threshold of the Christian 
life. It is the alphabet of Christian expe- 
rience to know the value of " the blood of 
sprinkling," Heb. xii. 24. The first step 
in the Christian course is into the " foun- 
tain opened," Zech. xiii. 1. 

The blood of Jesus is our great and 
only theme in the following pages. May 
the Divine Spirit make them to every read- 
er " the power of God unto salvation," 

Rom. i. 16. 

In closing these prefatory pages, the 
writer may remark, that although it would 
have been both easy and delightful to have 
written it wholly himself, he has purposely 
introduced extracts from various writers 
belonjniiK to the different sections of the 



l O ili D 



28 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

Church of Christ, — Episcopalians, Presby- 
terians, Independents, Baptists, &c, — that 
the anxious inquirer may enjoy the benefit 
of having saving truth presented to him in 
a variety of aspects, and may, at the same 
time, feel the moral effect of observing the 
perfect agreement of Spirit-taught Chris- 
tians, in the different branches of the 
Church of Christ, with regard to the one 
way of a sinner's acceptance with God, 
" by the blood of Jesus." 

It is again issued with the earnest prayer 
that the Holy Spirit would so bless it to all 
inquirers who read it, that they may " enter 
into the holiest by the blood of Jesus," 
Heb. x. 19, and learn to sing, " with joy- 
ful lips," the redemption-song :— " Unto 
him that loved us, and washed us from our 
sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
kings and priests unto God and his Father; 
to him be glory and dominion for ever and 
ever. Amen." Rev. i. 5, 6. 




CHAPTER II. 

FORGIVENESS OJ SINS THROUGH THE BLOOD OP 
JESUS. 

q^5^HE God of love, dear reader, in his 
\S\ written Word, which gives an ac- 
£ count of the rich mercy he has 
provided for the guilty, tells you 
that you may be saved. His Word 
assumes that you may be saved from guilt, 
sin, and wrath. And that Word also in- 
forms you that your salvation depends not 
on any thing you may do, but on what 
God has already done. Good news about 
God have reached our world, and in believ- 
ing these glad tidings, you shall be saved. 
This is the good news : " God commendeth 
his love toward us, in that, while we were 
yet sinners, Christ died for us" Rom. v. 8. 
" For God so loved the world that he gave 
his only-begotten Son, that whosoever be- 
lieveth in him should hot perish, but have 

29 



30 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

everlasting life," John iii. 16. "Christ 
died for the ungodly," Rom. v. 6. " He 
hath made him to be sin for us, who knew 
no sin ; that we might be made the right- 
eousness of God in him," 2 Cor. v. 21. 
If, by simply believing the good news about 
what God through Christ hath done for 
sinners, we become "partakers of Christ," 
Heb. iii. 14, and are " accepted in the Be- 
loved," Eph. i. 6, it will become matter of 
personal consciousness and spiritual joy 
that " we have redemption through his 
blood, the forgiveness of sins according to 
the riches of his grace," Eph. i. 7. " Be 
it known unto you, therefore, that through 
this man is preached unto you the forgive- 
ness of sins ; and by him all that believe 
are justified from all things," Acts xiii. 38. 
I beseech you to settle it in your mind 
that forgiveness of sins — Acts xiii. 88 — lies 
at the very threshold of the Christian life. 
It is a blessing needed and obtainable now. 
You must have forgiveness, or perish for 
ever ; you must have it now, or you can 
not have peace. It is surely a most de- 
lightful thought that you may have the 



FORGIVENESS THROUGH JESUS. 31 

guilt of all your past sins blotted out at 
once and for ever ! God pardons freely 
and at once. He does not inculcate any 
preparation in order to pardon. One who 
knew the blessedness of enjoying his par- 
doning mercy testifies thus concerning it: 
" If we confess our sins, he is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse 
us from all unrighteousness," 1 John i. 9 ; 
and this testimony was given on the ground 
of what he had affirmed in the same letter, 
that u the blood of Jesus Christ his Son 
cleanseth us from all sin," 1 John i. 7. 
He does not say, After you have repented 
more thoroughly, after you have spent days 
and weeks in agonizing prayer, after you 
become more thoroughly instructed in di- 
vine things, and after you pass through 
years of trouble and sorrow, then you may 
venture to hope for forgiveness. No ; but, 
knowing that Christ died to put away sin, 
you are warranted, on simply taking the 
place of a sinner, and accepting Jesus as 
your Saviour, to believe that, through the 
all-perfect merits of Christ, you are par- 
doned that very moment, and enjoy perfect 



32 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

peace with God; for God "justifieth the 
ungodly/' Rom. iv. 5. 

Peace with God, through the forgiveness 
of all your sins, may thus be obtained at 
any moment, seeing that you do not have 
to repent for it, work for it, or wait for it, 
but simply believe what God says regard- 
ing Christ " having made peace by the 
blood of his cross," Col. i. 20. "And 
being justified freely by his grace, through, 
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," 
Rom. iii. 24, and being fully satisfied that 
your sin has been forgiven you in a right- 
eous way, being put away by " the precious 
blood of Christ," 1 Pet. i. 19, — God being 
" well pleased for his righteousness' sake," 
Isa. xlii. 21 — "just, and the justifier of 
him that believeth in Jesus," Rom. iii. 28, 
— " peace that passeth all understanding," 
Phil. iv. 7, will spring up spontaneously 
within your soul, like the fresh, flowing 
current of a perennial fountain. 

In reference to the pardon of your sins, 
there is no time to be lost, for " the Holy 
Ghost saith, To-day," Heb. iii. 7 ; and 
were you now refusing to listen, and dying 



FORGIVENESS THROUGH JESUS. 33 

in your sins ere tomorrow's &uxi arose, you 
would inevitably perish eternally, notwith- 
standing your conviction of sin, and anx- 
ieties of soul ; for Jesus himself assures 
us that " he that believeth not shall be 
damned," Mark xvi. 16. Besides, you can 
do nothing else that will prove satisfactory 
to yourself, or well-pleasing to God, until 
you have obtained the forgiveness of your 
sins. And as pardon of sin is the first 
thing that you feel in need of, so it is the 
first thftig which is presented by the God 
of love for your acceptance ; for God is 
still to be found " in Christ reconciling 
sinners unto himself, not imputing their 
trespasses unto them," 2 Cor. v. 19. 
Moreover, you will have your whole life 
and character affected in a most striking 
way by the scripturalness or unseriptural- 
ness of the views you now entertain of 
" the God of all grace," 1 Pet. v. 10, and 
the heartiness or hesitancy with which you 
embrace his pardoning mercy. As a man's 
position in the world is very materially af- 
fected by the character of his elementary 
education and early training, so is the po= 



34 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

sition of even true believers in Christ ma* 
terially affected not only in this world, but 
in the world to come, by their being thor- 
oughly grounded or not grounded in the 
great elementary truths of the gospel of the 
grace of God, which preaches present par- 
don and immediate peace u to every one 
that believeth," Rom. L 1G. Your posi- 
tion, as well as destiny for tim§ and for 
eternity, are now to be determined ! It is, 
therefore, of the last importance that you 
should have thoroughly scriptural views 
and an intelligent experience of the grace 
of God as it is manifested to you, a sinner, 
in the person and work of his Son Jesus 
Christ. And again, the character of your 
service for God, and your success in win- 
ning souls, will very greatly depend upon 
the clearness with which you realize your 
own salvation through the blood of Christ 
at the commencement of your Christian 
course ; for how could you labor faithfully 
to bring others to feel the constraining 
power of the love of Christ, unless you 
yourself felt assured that he had loved you 
personally and put away your sin ? The 



FORGIVENESS THROUGH JESUS, 05 

most useful life must ever be that which is 
(irmly based on a knowledge of Christ cru- 
cified as the sole ground of acceptance with 
God, and on being justified, and having 
peace " through our Lord Jesus Christ 
who died for us," 1 Thess. v. 9, 10. It 
will be found that those who do most for 
God and their fellow-sinners are such as 
the Rev. Robert M'Cheyne, who knew him- 
self to be forgiven by God and safe for eter- 
nity ; of whom his biographer says, that 
" he walked calmly in almost unbroken fel- 
lowship with the Father and the Son ; ?? 
and who himself thus describes his own 
undoubted conversion in the only record 
he has left of it : — 

" When free grace awoke me, by light from on high, 
Then legal fears shook me ; 1 trembled to die ; 
No refuge, no safety in self could I see : 
Jehovah Tsidkenu * my Saviour must be. 

" My terrors all vanished before the sweet name ; 
My guilty fears vanished, with boldness I came 
To drink at the Fountain, life-giving and free : 
Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me." 




CHAPTER III. 

HOW OUR SINS ARE TAKEN AWAY BY THE BLOOD 
OF JESUS. 

^/HERE is every reason why you 
should now intelligently and be- 
lievingly behold the Lamb of God, 
" which taketh away the sin of the 
world," John i. 19. You are not 
directed in this passage to a Saviour who 
has already taken away the sin of the 
world, but to him who taketh away the sin 
of the world. The meaning plainly is, that 
Jesus is the God-appointed Taker-away of 
sin for the world. We find him asserting 
this, when he says, " The Son of man hath 
power on earth to forgive sins," Matt. ix. 
6 ; '** All power " (or authority) " is given 
me in heaven and on earth," Matt, xxviii. 
18. Jesus is the only and the all-sufficient, 
as he is the authorized, Taker-away of sin, 
for the world at large. The whole world 

3G 



HO W SIXS ARE TAKEN AWAY. 37 

is brought in guilty before God, " for all 
have sinned," Rom. hi. 23 ; and the true 
gospel of God is, that when any one be- 
longing to our sinful world feels his sin to 
be oppressive, and comes straight to " the 
Lamb of God" with it, and frankly ac- 
knowledges it, and tells out his anxieties 
regarding it, and his desire to get rid of it, 
he will find that Jesus has both the power 
and the will to take it away ; and on see- 
ing it removed from him by " the blood of 
his cross," Col. i. 20, " as far as the east is 
from the west," Ps. ciii. 12, he will be en- 
abled to sing with a grateful heart and 
"joyful lips : " — 

11 1 lay my sins on Jesus, 

The spotless Lamb of God ; 
He bears them all, and frees us 
From the accursed load." 

You can never make an atonement for 
your past sins, nor by personal obedience 
procure a title to the inheritance of glory ; 
but Jesus is willing to take away all your 
sins, and to give you his own title to the 
glorious kingdom, if you will only consent 
to intrust him alone with your salvation. 



08 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

" Well," perhaps you may resolve, " I 
will go to him, and cast myself upon his 
mercy, and if I perish, I perish." Ah, but 
you need not go to him in that spirit, for it 
throws a doubt upon the all-sufficiency of 
his completed atonement for sin, and his 
perfect, spotless life of obedience. 

Jesus himself says, " God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life," John hi. 
16. These being the " true sayings of 
God," Rev. xix. 9, where, friend, is 
there the least cause for your saying, with 
hesitancy and doubt, "If I perish, I per- 
ish " ? The proper thought you ought to 
have in reference to the glorious gospel is 
this : God has so loved the world as to 
give his only-begotten Son to die for sin- 
ners, and he assures me that if I, a perish- 
ing sinner, believe in him, I shall not per- 
ish, but have everlasting life ; I believe his 
Word, and reckon that if he gave his Sou 
to die for us while we were yet sinners, he 
will with him also freely give all such 
things as pardon and purity, grace and 



HOW SINS ARE TAKEN AWAY. 89 

glory ; and if, in accordance with his own 
gracious invitation, I rest my soul upon his 
manifested love in Christ Jesus, I believe 
that it will be as impossible for me to per- 
ish as for God to change his nature, or to 
cancel the word of grace and truth, that 
the "blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleans- 
eth us from all sin," 1 John i. 7. 

God the Father loved sinners so much as 
to send Jesus to die for them. Jesus loved 
sinners so much as to lay down his life for 
their redemption. The Holy Spirit loves 
sinners so much that he has written a rec- 
ord of God's manifested love to them in 
Jesus Christ ; and he himself has come 
down in person, to reveal that love to their 
souls, that they may be saved. And if you, 
anxious one, will now agree to God's 
method of transferring all that Divine jus- 
tice demands of you to Jesus, " who was 
made of a woman, made under the law," 
who perfectly obeyed and pleased the 
Father in his holy life, and in death en- 
dured and exhausted the penalty due to 
sin, you will obtain pardon, peace, grace, 
and holiness ; the full tide of the love of 



40 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

God, which passeth knowledge, will flow 
into your soul, and, in the spirit of adop- 
tion, you will cry, "Abba, Father," Gal. iv. 
6, feel the constraining influence of the 
love of Christ, and live to the glory of 
" Him who died for us and rose again." 

That I may make the method of a sin- 
ner's salvation so plain, that he that read- 
cth it — Hab. ii. 2 — may have his mind's 
eye so full of its meaning that he may run 
at once to Jesus Christ, as his Divine sin- 
bearer, I will present the following home- 
ly and unmistakable illustration : — While 
standing one day on the platform of the 
Aberdeen Station of the North-Eastern 
Railway, I observed a carriage with a 
board on it intimating that it ran all the 
way from Aberdeen to London. The doors 
of it were open ; the porters were putting 
passengers' luggage on the top of it ; and a 
few individuals were entering, or about to 
enter, its different compartments. They 
looked for this particular carriage as soon 
as they had passed through the ticket- 
office; and on seeing "London" on it, they 



HO W SINS ARE TAKEN A WA Y. 41 

entered, and, seating themselves, prepared 
for the journey. 

Having furnished themselves with tickets 
and railway guides, and satisfied them- 
selves that they were in the right carriage, 
they felt the utmost confidence, and I did 
not observe any one of them coming out 
of the carriage and running about in a 
state of excitement, calling to those around 
them, " Am I right ? am I right ? " 

Nor did I see any one refusing to enter, 
because the carriage provided for only a 
limited number to proceed by that train. 
There might be 80,000 inhabitants in and 
around the city ; but still there was not 
one who talked of it as absurd to provide 
accommodation for only about twenty per- 
sons, for practically it was found to be per- 
fectly sufficient. Trains leave the city 
several times a day, and it is found that 
one carriage from London in the train is 
quite sufficient for the number of passen- 
gers ; and on the particular day to which 
I now refer, I noticed, that so ample was 
the accommodation, that one of the passen- 
gers had a whole compartment to himself. 



42 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

The carriage is for the whole city and 
neighborhood, but carries only such of the 
inhabitants as come and seat themselves in 
it from day to day. 

God, in his infinite wisdom, has made 
provision of a similar kind for our lost 
world. He has provided a train of grace 
to carry as many of its inhabitants to 
heaven, the great metropolis of the uni- 
verse, as are willing to avail themselves 
of the gracious provision. 

When we call you by the preaching of 
the gospel, the meaning is, that all who 
will may come, and, passing through the 
booking-office of justification by faith alone, 
seat themselves in a carriage marked, 
" From Guilt to Glory." Whenever you 
hear the free and general offer of salvation, 
you need not stand revolving the question 
in your own mind, " Is it for me ? " for 
just as the railway company carry all who 
comply with their printed regulations, irre- 
spective of moral character, so if you come 
to the station of grace at the advertised 
time, which is " now" — for " Behold now 
is the accepted time," 2 Cor. vi. 2, — you 






HOW SI2TS ARE TAKEN AWAY. 4o 

will find the train of salvation ready ; and 
the only regulation to be complied with by 
yon, in order to your being carried by it, 

is that vou consent to let the Lord Jesus 

«/ 

Christ charge himself with paying for your 
seat, which can not, surely, be any thing 
but an easy and desirable arrangement, 
seeing you have no means of paying for 
yourself. 

Were you coming to the railway-station 
with no money in your pocket, and anxious 
to travel by a train just ready to start, in 
order to be put in possession of a valuable 
inheritance left to you by a friend ; and 
were any one to meet you at the door of 
the ticket-office, and say, " I will pay your 
fare for you," you would not feel any 
thing but the utmost satisfaction in com- 
plying with such a regulation ; and is it 
not an easy matter for you on coming to 
the station of mercy to submit to the regu- 
lation of the gospel, to let Jesus pay your 
fare for the train of grace, that you may 
take your seat with confidence, and be car- 
ried along the new and living way to ever- 
lasting glory ? 



44 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

If we want to know the gospel and be 
saved, we must know Jesus as our Sin- 
bearer ; for " Christ crucified is the sum 
of the gospel and the richness of it. Paul 
was so taken with Jesus that nothing 
sweeter than Jesus could drop from his 
pen and lips. It is observed that he hath 
the word Jesus five hundred times in his 
epistles." * Jesus was his constant subject 
of meditation, and out of the good treasure 
of the heart his mouth spoke and his pen 
wrote. He felt that Christ was made of 
God unto him " wisdom, and righteous- 
ness, and sanctification, and redemption," 
1 Cor. i. 30 ; and glorying in the Lord 
and in his cross, he determined not to 
know any thing among those to whom he 
preached and wrote, " save Jesus Christ 
and him crucified," 1 Cor. ii. 2. That 
faith which is not built on a dying Christ 
is but a perilous dream ; God awaken all 
from it that are in it ! 

" Christ alone is our salvation ; 

Christ the rock on which we stand; 
Other than this sure foundation 
Will be found but sinking sand. 

* Charnock, 1684. 



HOW SINS ARE TAKEN AWAY, 45 

Christ, his cross and resurrection, 

Is alone the sinner's plea; 
At the throne of God's perfection, 

Nothing else can set him free. 

u We have all things, Christ possessing; 

Life eternal, second birth ; 
Present pardon, peace, and blessing, 

While we tan# here on earth ; 
And by faith's anticipation, 

Foretastes of the joy above, 
Freely given us with salvation, 

By the Father in his love. 

44 When we perfect joy shall enter, 

'Tis in him our bliss will rise; 
He's the essence, soul, and center 

Of the glory in the skies : 
In redemption's wondrous story, 

(Planned before our parents' fall), 
From the Cross unto the Glory, 

Jesus Christ is all in all. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE BLOOD OP JESUS, NOT CONVICTION OF SIN, 
THE FOUNDATION OF OUR PEACE AND JOY. 

F the Holy Ghost be awakening you 
to a true apprehension of your dan- 
ger as a rebel against God's author- 
ity, — a guilty, polluted, hell-deserv- 
ing sinner, — you must be in a deeply 
anxious state of mind, and such questions 
as these must be ever present with you: 
" What must I do to be saved ? What 
is the true ground of a sinner's peace witli 
God ? What am I to believe in order to 
be saved ? " Well, in so far as laying the 
foundation of your reconciliation is con- 
cerned, I wish you to observe that you 
have nothing to do; for the Almighty 
Surety of sinners said on Calvary, " It is 
finished," John xix. 30. Jesus has done 
all that the Holy Jehovah deemed neces- 
sary to be done to insure complete pardon, 

46 



FOUNDATION OF PEACE AND JOY. 4( 

acceptance, and salvation to all who believe 
in his name. If you take Jesus as your 
Saviour, you will build securely for eter- 
nity. " For other foundation can no man 
lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ, 5 ' 
1 Cor. iii. 11. He is the foundation-stone 
of salvation laid by God himself, and on 
his finished atoning work alone you are in- 
structed to rest the salvation of your soul, 
and not on any thing accomplished by you, 
wrought in you, felt by you, or proceeding 
from you. It is of the last importance to 
be clear as to the fact that it is the work 
of Christ ivithout you, and not the work of 
the Spirit within you, that must form the 
sole ground of your deliverance from guilt 
and wrath, and of peace with God. You 
must beware of resting your peace on 
your feelings, convictions, tears, repent- 
ance, prayers, duties, or resolutions. You 
must begin with receiving Christ, and not 
make that the termination of a course of 
fancied preparation. Christ must be the 
Alpha and Omega. He must be every 
thing in our salvation, or he will be noth- 
ing'. Beware lest you fall into the com- 



48 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

mon mistake of supposing that you will 
be more welcome to accept of Christ that 
you are brought through a terrible process 
of "law-work." You are as welcome to 
Christ now as you will ever be. Wait not 
for deeper convictions of sin ; for why 
should you prefer conviction to Christ ? 
And you would not have one iota more 
safety, although you had deeper convictions 
of sin than any sinner ever had. " Con- 
victions of sin are precious ; but they 
bring no safety, no peace, no salvation, no 
security, but war and storm and trouble. 
It is well to be awakened from sleep when 
danger is hanging over us ; but to awake 
from sleep is not to escape from danger. 
It is only to be sensible of danger, nothing 
more. In like manner, to be convinced of 
your sins is merely to be made sensible 
that your soul is in danger. It is no more. 
It is not deliverance. Of itself, it can bring 
no deliverance ; it tells of no Saviour. It 
merely tells us that we need one. Yet 
there are many who, when they have had 
deep convictions of sin, strong terrors of 
the law, congratulate themselves as if all 



FO UNDA TI02T OF PEA CE AND JO Y. 49 

were well. They say, c Ah, I have been 
convinced of sin ; I have been under ter- 
rors ; it is well with me ; I am safe.' Well 
with you ? Safe ? Is it well with the sea- 
man when he awakes and finds his vessel 
going to pieces upon the rocks amid the 
fury of the whelming surge ? Is it well 
with the sleeper when he awakes at mid- 
night amid the flames of his dwelling ? 
Does he say, ' Ah, it is well with me ; I 
have seen the flames ' ? In this way sin- 
ners are not unfrequently led to be content 
with some resting-place short of the ap- 
pointed one. Anxiety to have deep con- 
victions, and contentment with them after 
they have been experienced, are too often 
the means which Satan uses for turning 
away the sinner's eye from the perfect 
work of Jesus, who himself bore our sins 
in his own body on the tree. Our peace 
with God, our forgiveness, our reconcile 
ation, flow wholly from the sin-atoning sac- 
rifice of Jesus. 

" Behold, then, Spirit-convinced soul, 
the Lamb of God that taketh away the s\u 
of the world ! In his death upon the cross, 
4 



50 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

behold the Lamb of God that taketh away 
the sin of the world ! In his death upon 
the cross, behold the mighty sacrifice, the 
ransom for the sins of many ! See there 
the sum of all his obedience and suffer- 
ings ! Behold the finished work ! — a work 
of stupendous magnitude, which he alone 
could have undertaken and accomplished ! 
Behold our sacrifice, our finished sacrifice, 
our perfected redemption, the sole foun- 
dation of our peace and hope and joy. 
* He his own self bare our sins in his own 
body on the tree,' 1 Pet. ii. 24. It is not 
said that our duties, or our prayers, or our 
fastings, or our convictions of sin, or our 
repentance, or our honest life, or our alms- 
deeds, or our faith, or our grace — it is not 
said that these bore our sins ; it was Jesus, 
Jesus himself, Jesus alone, Jesus, and none 
but Jesus, ' bore our sins in his own body 
on the tree.' Rest, then, in nothing short 
of peace with God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

" Christ has done the mighty work ; 
Nothing left for us to do, 
But to enter on his toil, 
Enter on his triumph too. 



FOUNDATION OF PEACE AND JOY. 51 

" His the labor, ours the rest ; 

His the death, and ours the life; 
Ours the fruits of victory, 
His the agony and strife." 



CHAPTER V. 



A LETTER ABOUT THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

URGE you," wrote an eminent au- 
thor* to a dying man, — " I urge you 
to cast yourself at once, in the sim- 
v0 plest faith, upon the Lord Jesus 
6 Christ, and you shall be saved. All 
your true preparation for death is entirely 

*Some time ago, the Rev. Dr. Winslow of Bath received a 
letter from a youth, apparently near death, asking him to re- 
ply to it in the columns of a religious periodical, which he did, 
and the above quotation contains the most important part of 
his reply. The subjoined are Dr. Winslow's note to the au- 
thor, and the youth's interesting note to Dr. Win slow : — 

My dear Sir, — A few days ago I received the following 
note. Will you allow a brief reply to the all-important ques- 
tion it contains, through the columns of your wide-spread 
and most useful journal ? I write hurriedly, and on a journey, 
but I will endeavor to make the apostle's reply to the 
awakened jailer my model for point and conciseness. And 
oh, may the same Divine Spirit apply the answer with like 
immediate and saving result ! — 

'* To the Rev. Dr. Winslow. 

" Dear Sir, — You would greatly oblige a sinner* if you 
would write a piece .... for September, and tell him what he 
must do to prepare to die — what is the preparation required 

52 



. 



A LETTER 0JV THE SUBJECT. 53 

out of yourself and in the Lord Jesus. 
Washed in his blood, and clothed upon 
with his righteousness, you may appear be- 
fore God, divinely, fully, freely, and for 
ever accepted. The salvation of the chief 
sinners is all prepared, finished, and com- 
plete in Christ, — Eph. i. 6 ; Col. ii. 10. 
Again, I repeat, your eye of faith must 
now be directed entirely, out of and from 
yourself, to Jesus. Beware of looking for 
any preparation to meet death in yourself. 
It is all in Christ. God does not accept 
you on the ground of a broken heart, or 
a clean heart, or a praying heart, or a 
believing heart. He accepts you wholly 
and entirely on the ground of the atone- 
ment of his blessed Son. Cast yourself, 
in childlike faith, upon that atonement — 
' Christ dying for the ungodly,' Rom. v. 6, 
and you are saved ! Justification is a 
poor, law-condemned, self-condemned, self- 
destroyed sinner, wrapping himself by faith 
in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus 

by God — and when he is fit to die. By your doing so, yoa 
will greatly oblige a young person who feels that his time is 
short in this world. Now, what is justification ? and when is 
a sinner justified V 



i 



54 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

Christ, ' which is unto all, and upon all 
them that believe,' Rom. iii. 22. He, then, 
is justified, and is prepared to die, and he 
only, who casts from him the garment of 
his own righteousness, and runs into this 
blessed ' City of Refuge,' — the Lord Jesus, 
— and hides himself there from the ' re- 
venger of blood,' exclaiming, in the lan- 
guage of triumphant faith, ' There is now 
no condemnation to them that are in Christ 
Jesus,' Rom. viii. 1. Look to Jesus, then, 
for a contrite heart, look to Jesus for a 
clean heart, look to Jesus for a believing 
heart, look to Jesus for a loving heart, 
and Jesus will give you all. One faith's 
touch of Christ, aiid one divine touch from 
Christ, will save the vilest sinner. Oh, the 
dimmest, most distant glance of faith, turn- 
ing its languid eye upon Christ, will heal 
and save the soul. God is prepared to ac- 
cept you in his blessed Son, and for his 
sake he will cast all your sins behind his 
back, and take you to glory when you die. 
Never was Jesus known to reject a poor 
sinner that came to him empty and with 
' nothing to pay.' God will glorify his free 



A LETTER ON THE SUBJECT 55 

grace in your salvation, and will therefore 
save you, just as you are, ' without money 
and without price,' Isa. lxv. 1. I close 
with Paul's reply to the anxious jailer : 
' Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved,' Acts xvi. 31, No 
matter what you have been, or what you 
are, plunge into the 'fountain opened for 
sin and for uncleanness,' Zech. xiii. 1, and 
you shall be clean, washed ' whiter than 
snow,' Ps. li. 7. Heed no suggestion of 
Satan, or of unbelief. Cast yourself at the 
feet of Jesus, and if you perish, perish 
there ! Oh, no ! perish you never will, 
for he hath said, ' Him that cometh to me 
I will in no wise cast out,' John vi. 37. 
' Come unto me,' Matt. xi. 28, is his 
blessed invitation ; let your reply be, 
' Lord, I come ! I come ! I come ! I en- 
twine my feeble, trembling arms of faith 
around thy cross, around thyself, and if I 
die, I will die, cleaving, clinging, looking 
unto thee ! ' So act and believe, and you 
need not fear to die. Looking at the Sav- 
iour in the face, you can look at death in 
the face, exclaiming with good old Simeon, 



56 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

' Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart 
in peace : for mine eyes have seen thy sal- 
vation/ Luke ii. 29. May we, through 
rich, free, and sovereign grace, meet in 
heaven, and unite together in exclaiming, 
4 Worthy is the Lamb : for he was slain foi 
us ! ' Rev. v. 12." 

" How glorious is thy name 

Through all the ransomed host, 
worthy Lamb, who came 
To seek and save the lost ! 

•* Thou art, beyond compare, 
Most precious in our sight ! 
Than sons of men more fair, 
And infinite in might ! 

u Thy perfect work divine 
Makes us for ever blest; 
Here truth and mercy shine, 
And men with God do rosV 9 




CHAPTER VI. 

SALVATION THROUGH THE BLOOD OF JESUS, 
THE GIFT OF GOD. 

)EAR reader : — As I am anxious 
that the one grand theme — salva- 
tion through the blood-shedding of 
Jesus alone — should be set before 
you in a variety of aspects, that, if 
you miss it in one, you may realize it in 
another, I would now present it as a gift 
of grace. "For by grace are ye saved," 
Eph. ii. 8. " The gift of God is eternal 
life through Jesus Christ our Lord" Rom. 
vi. 23. " For God so loved the world that 
he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth in him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life," John iii. 16. 
" Here," says one of the English Reform- 
ers, " God, who is infinite and unspeak- 
able, gives after such a manner as passeth 
all things. For that which he gives he 

57 



58 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

gives not as the wages of desert, but of 
mere love. This sort of giving, which has 
its spring in love, makes this gift more ex- 
cellent and precious. And the, words of 
Christ are plain that God loveth us. And 
as God, the giver, is exceedingly great, so 
is the gift that he giveth, which is his only 
Son. Let us understand that God is not 
said to be angry with the world, but to love 
it in that he gave his Son for it. God is 
merciful to us and loveth us, and of very 
love gave his Son unto us, that we should 
not perish, but have everlasting life. Ajid 
as God giveth by love and mercy, so do we 
take and receive by faith and not other- 
wise. Faith only — that is, trust in the 
mercy and grace of God — is the very 
hand by which we take this gift. This gift 
is given to make us safe from death and 
sin. And it is bestowed upon the world, 
and the world signifies all mankind. Why 
shculdest thou not suffer thyself to be of 
this name, seeing that Christ witlv plain 
words saith, that God gave not his Son 
only for Mary, Peter, and Paul, but for the 
world, that all should receive him that are 



SALVATION THE GIFT OF GOD. 59 

the sons of men ? Then if thou or I should 
receive him as if he did not appertain to 
us, truly it would consequently follow that 
Christ's words are not true ; whereas he 
saith he was given and delivered for the 
world. Wherefore hereof appears that the 
contrary thereto is most assuredly true, 
that this gift belongs as well unto thee as 
to Peter and Paul, forasmuch as thou also 
art a man as they were, and a portion of 
the world. . . . Whatsoever I am, God is 
not to be taken as unfaithful to his prom- 
ise. I am a portion of the world ; where- 
fore if I take not this gift as mine, I make 
God untrue. But thou wilt say, ' Why 
does he not show this to me alone ? Then 
I would believe and think surely that it ap- 
pertained to me.' But it is for a great con- 
sideration that God speaks here so gen- 
erally ; to the intent, verily, that no man 
should think that he is excluded from this 
promise and gift. He that excludes him- 
self must give an account why he does so. 
' I will not judge them,' saith he, ' but 
they shall be judged of their own mouth.' 
• . . . We are saved, ihen, only by the 



60 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

mercy of God ; and we obtain this grace 
only by faith, without virtue, without mer- 
its, and without works. For the whole 
matter that is necessary to the getting of 
everlasting life and remission of sins, is al- 
together and fully comprehended in the 
love and mercy of God through Christ." * 

" Blessed be God our God ! 
Who gave for us his well-beloved Son, 
His gift of gifts, all other gifts in one, 
Blessed be God our God ! 

" He spared not his Son! 
'Tis this that silences each rising fear, 
'Tis this that bids the hard thought disappear; 
He spared not his Son ! " 



<< 



I must say," wrote Dr. Chalmers in a 
letter to a friend, " that I never had so 
close and satisfactory a view of the gospel 
salvation as when I have been led to con- 
template it in the light of a simple offer on 
the one side, and a simple acceptance on 
the other. It is just saying to one and all 
of us, ' There is forgiveness through the 
blood of my Son ; take it ; ' — and whoever 
believes the reality of the offer takes it. 

* Works of Thomas Becon, born 1510. 



SALVATION THE GIFT OF GOD, 61 

"It is not in any shape the reward of 
our own services ; ... it is the gift of God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is not 
given because you are worthy to receive it, 
but because it is a gift worthy of our kind 
and reconciled Father to bestow. 

" We are apt to stagger at the greatness 
of the unmerited offer, and can not attach 
faith to it till we have made up some title 
of our own. This leads to two mischievous 
consequences. It keeps alive the presump- 
tion of one class of Christians, who will 
still be thinking that it is something in 
themselves and of themselves which con- 
fers upon them a right to salvation ; and it 
confirms the melancholy of another class, 
who look into their own hearts and their 
own lives, and find that they can not make 
out a shadow of a title to the Divine favor. 
The error of both lies in their looking to 
themselves when they should be looking to 
their Saviour. ' Look unto me, and be ye 
saved, all the ends of the earth,' Isa. xlv. 
22. 

" The Son of man was so lifted up that 
whosoever believeth in him should not per* 



62 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

ish but have everlasting life, John iii. 14, 
15. It is your part simply to lay hold of 
the proffered boon. You are invited to do 
so ; you are entreated to do so ; nay, what 
is more, you are commanded to do so. It 
is true, you are unworthy, and without 
holiness no man can see God ; but be not 
afraid, only believe ! You can not get 
holiness of yourself, but Christ has under- 
taken to provide it for you. It is one of 
those spiritual blessings of which he has 
the dispensation, and which he has prom- 
ised to all who believe in him. 

" God has promised that with his Son 
he will freely give you all things, Rom. viii. 
32, — that he will walk in you, and dwell 
in you, 2 Cor. vi. 16, — that he will purify 
your heart by faith, Acts xv. 9, — that he 
will put his law in your heart, and write it 
in your mind, Heb. viii. 10. 

" These are the effects of your believing 
in Christ, and not the services by which 
you become entitled to believe in him. 
Make a clear outset in the business, and 
understand that your first step is simply a 
confiding acceptance of an offer that is 



SALVATION THE GIFT OF GOD, 63 

most free, most frank, most generous, and 
most unconditional. 

" If I were to come as an accredited 
agent from the upper sanctuary, with a 
letter of invitation to you, with your name 
and address on it, you would not doubt 
your warrant to accept it. Well, here is 
the Bible, your invitation to come to 
Christ. It does not bear your name and 
address, but it says ' Whosoever 1 — that 
takes you in ; it says i all ' — that takes 
you in ; it says l if any ' — that takes you 
in. What can be surer or freer than 
that?* 

" We glory," says old Traill of London, 
" in any name of reproach (as the honor- 
able reproach of Christ) that is cast upon 
us for asserting the absolute, boundless 
freedom of the grace of God, which ex- 
cludes all merit, and every thing like it ; 
the absoluteness of the covenant of grace, 
for the covenant of redemption was plainly 
and strictly a conditional one, and the no- 
blest of all conditions was in it. 

" The Son of God's taking on him man's 
nature, and offering it in sacrifice, was the 



61 ' THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

strict condition of all the glory and reward 
promised to Christ and his seed, Isa. liii. 
10, 11, wherein all things are freely prom- 
ised ; and that faith that is required for 
sealing a man's interest in the covenant is 
promised in it, and wrought by the grace 
of it, Eph. ii. 8. That faith at first is 
wrought by, and acts upon, a full and ab- 
solute offer of Christ, and of all his fullness ; 
an offer that hath no condition in it, but 
that native one to all offers, acceptance : 
and in the very act of this acceptance, the 
acceptor doth expressly disclaim all things 
in himself, but sinfulness and misery. 

" That faith in Jesus Christ doth justify 
(although, by the way, it is to be noted 
that it is never written in the Word that 
faith justifieth actively, but always pas- 
sively, that a man is justified by faith, and 
that God justifieth men by and through 
faith ; yet admitting the phrase) only as a 
mere instrument, receiving that imputed 
righteousness of Christ for which we are 
justified ; and that this faith, in the office 
of justification, is neither condition, nor 
qualification, nor our gospel righteousness, 



SALVATION THE GIFT OF GOD. 65 

but in its very act a renouncing of all sush 
pretenses. 

" We proclaim the market of grace to be 
free, Isa. Iv. 1-3. It is Christ's last offer 
and lowest, Rev. xxii. 17. If there be any 
price or money spoken of, it is no price, no 
money. And where such are the terms 
and conditions, if we be forced to call them 
so, we must say that they look more like a 
renouncing, than a boasting of any qualifi- 
cations or conditions. Surely the terms of 
the gospel bargain are, God's free giving, 
and our free taking and receiving." 

It is quite natural for us, born, as we 
are, under the law, and brought up under 
the restraining influences of religion and 
civilization, to suppose that we can be 
saved only by conforming to certain rules 
and fulfilling certain conditions. It is dif- 
ficult to lay aside the performing of all 
duties as a means of being accepted gra- 
ciously ]jy G-pd, and to submit to be sought 
and saved simply as lost sinners, by a lov- 
ing Redeemer, who delivers us from guilt, 
corruption, and perdition, " without money 
and without price," Isa. Iv. 1. 



66 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

An eminent writer of last centuiy says 
truly, — "The gospel is much clouded by 
legal terms, conditions, and qualifications. 
If my doctrine were, Upon condition that 
you did so and so — that you believe and 
repent and mourn and pray and obey 
and the like, then you shall have the fa- 
vor of God — I dare not for my life say 
that is the gospel. But the gospel I desire 
to preach to you is, Will you have a Christ 
to work faith, repentance, love, and all 
good in you, and to stand between you and 
the sword of Divine wrath ? Here there is 
no room for you to object that you are not 
qualified, because you are such a hardened, 
unlmmbled, blind, and stupid wretch. For 
the question is not, Will you remove these 
evils, and then come to Christ ? but, Will 
you have a Christ fa remove them for you ? 
It is because you are plagued with these 
diseases that I call you to come to the Phy- 
sician that he may heal them. Are you 
guilty ? I offer him unto you for right- 
eousness. Are you polluted ? I offer him 
unto you for sanctification. Are you mis- 
erable and forlorn ? I offer him as made 



SALVAflOX THE GIFT OF GOD, 



67 



of God unto you complete redemption. 
Are you hard-hearted ? I offer him in that 
promise, ' I will take away the heart of 
stone,' Ezek. xxxvi. 26. Are you content 
that he break your hard heart? Come, 
then, and put your hard heart into his 
hand." 

. » I've found the Pearl of greatest price ! 
My heart doth sing for joy; 
And sing I must, a Christ I have ! 
Oh, what a Christ have I ! 

" My Christ he is the Lord of lords, 
Heis the King of kings; 
He is the Sun of Righteousness, 
With healing in his wings. 

" My Christ he is the Tree of Life 
Which in God's garden grows; 
Whose fruits do feed, whose leaves do heal; 
My Christ is Sharon's Rose. 

" Christ is my meat, Christ is my drink, 
My medicine and my health; 
My peace, my strength, my joy, my crown, 
My glory, and my wealth.' ■ 




CHAPTER VII. 

THE BLOOD OP JESUS OUR ONLY GROUND OF 
PEACE WITH GOD. 

HEN you, who are anxious about 
your soul, are hearing much 
prayer offered by Christians for 
the Holy Spirit, you may conclude 
that the first thing you also have 
to do is to pray for the Holy Spirit ; but 
Jesus himself sets you right in this matter 
when he says, " This is the work of God, 
that ye believe on him whom he hath sent," 
John vi. 29. If you desire to do this at 
the throne of grace, by all means repair 
thither, but do not go to it to do any thing 
else at present. Believers in Jesus pray 
"in the Holy Ghost," Jude 20, that he 
may revive the work of God in themselves 
and in their fellow-believers, — - lead awak- 
ened souls to Jesus, — - and convince sinners 
of tli eir wickedness and unbelief; but as 

68 



GROUND OF PEACE WITH GOD. 69 

your only foundation for peace, pardon, 
purity, and glory, is to be found in the 
blood-shedding of Jesus, your more imme- 
diate occupation is to " behold the Lamb 
of God," John i. 29. No doubt, the quick- 
ening presence of the Holy Spirit is most 
essential to your seeing Jesus, to the saving 
of your soul ; and you should by all means 
expect his gracious presence to be vouch- 
safed as you contemplate the crucified Re- 
deemer ; but it is unscriptural to seek the 
sanctification of your heart through the 
Spirit before the justification of your per- 
son through Christ ; and it is equally un- 
scriptural to mix the two, and depend 
partly on the one and partly on the other ; 
for Jesus, and Jesus only, is the object on 
which your anxious eyes must rest for 
peace with God and a change of heart. 
" It is Christ that died," Rom. viii. 34 ; 
and the Spirit's office is to direct you to 
him who said on Calvary, " It is finished," 
John xix. 30. It is no where written in 
Scripture, the work of God's Holy Spirit 
cleanseth us from sin ; but it is written 
that " The blood of Jesus Christ his Son 



70 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

cleanseth us from all sin," 1 John i. 7. 
What you are called upon, then, more es- 
pecially to do, is to receive Jesus as your 
Redeemer, that you may " have redemp- 
tion through his blood, the forgiveness of 
sins, according to the riches of his grace," 
Eph. i. 7 ; for it is written, " As many as 
received him, to them gave he power to be- 
come the sons of God, even to them that 
believe on his name," John i. 12. We are 
not required to be prepared as sons, and 
then come and be accepted of God, be jus- 
tified, and have our sins pardoned through 
Jesus ; but we are instructed to come to 
Jesus iii order to our being justified freely 
by his grace, aud made sons through living 
union with him who is the eternal Son of 
God. We are justified freely as sinners, 
and being thus accepted in the Beloved, we 
become sons of God, and have the nature, 
experience, and walk of his children. 
Awakened sinner ! begin at the beginning 
of the alphabet of salvation, by looking 
upon him who was pierced on Calvary's 
cross for our sins ; look to the Lamb of 
God, and keep continually looking unto 



GROUND OF PEACE WITH GOD. 71 

Jesus, and not at your repentings, resolu- 
tions, reformations, praying, reading, hear- 
ing, or any thing of yours as forming any 
reason why you should be accepted, par- 
doned, and saved, — and you will soon find 
peace, and take your place among them 
that " worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in 
Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the 
flesh," Phil. iii. 3. 

I do not know a more striking illustra- 
tion of salvation by the blood of Jesus 
alone than that which is furnished by the 
sprinkling of the blood of the passover lamb 
on the homes of the Israelites, on the eve 
of their redemption from the bondage of 
Egypt. " The blood on the lintel secured 
Israel's peace." * There was nothing more 
required in order to enjoy settled peace, in 
reference to the destroying angel, than the 
application of " the blood of sprinkling." 
God did not add any thing to the blood, 
because nothing more was necessary to ob- 
tain salvation from the sword of judgment. 
He did not say, " When I see the blood 
and the unleavened bread or bitter herbs, I 

* Things New and Old, vol. i. 



72 THE BLOOD OF JESUS, 

will pass over." By no means. These 
things had their proper place and their 
proper value ; but they never could be re- 
garded as the ground of peace in the pres- 
ence of God. 

"It is most needful to be simple and 
clear as to what it is which constitutes the 
ground-work of peace. So many things are 
mixed up with the work of Christ that 
souls are plunged in darkness and uncer- 
tainty as to their acceptance. They know 
that there is no other way of being saved 
but by the blood of Christ ; but the devils 
know this, and it avails them naught. 
What is needed is to know that we are 
saved, — absolutely, perfectly, eternally 
saved. There is no such thing as being 
partly saved and partly lost ; partly justi- 
fied and partly guilty ; partly alive and 
partly' dead ; partly born of God and partly 
not. There are but the two states, and we 
must be in either the one or the other. 

" The Israelite was not partly sheltered 
by the blood, and partly exposed to the 
sword of the destroyer. He knew he 
was safe. He did not hope so. He was 



GROUND OF PEACE WITH GOD. 73 

not praying to be so. He was perfectly 
safe. And why ? Because God hath said, 
6 When 1 see the blood, I will pass over 
you/ Exod. xii. 13. He simply rested 
upon God's testimony about the shed blood. 
He set to his seal that God was true. He 
believed that God meant what he said, and 
that gave him peace. He was able to take 
his place at the paschal-feast, in confidence, 
quietness, and assurance, knowing that the 
destroyer could not touch him, when a spot- 
less victim had died in his stead. 

" If an Israelite had been asked as to his 
enjoyment of peace, what would he have 
said ? Would he have said, ' I know there 
is no other way of escape but by the blood 
of the Lamb ; and I know that that is a di- 
vinely perfect way ; and, moreover, I know 
that that blood has been shed and sprinkled 
on my door-post ; but somehow, I do not 
feel quite comfortable. I am not quite sure 
that I am safe. I fear I do not value the 
blood as I ought, nor love the God of my 
fathers as I ought ? ' Would such have 
been his answer ? Assuredly not. And yet 
hundreds of professing Christians speak 



\ 



74 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

thus, when asked if they have peace. They 
put their thoughts about the blood in place 
of the blood itself, and thus, in result, 
make salvation as much dependent upon 
themselves as if they were to be saved by 
works. 

"Now, the Israelite was saved by the 
blood alone, and not by his thoughts about 
it. His thoughts might be deep or they 
might be shallow, but, deep or shallow, 
they had nothing to do with his safety. 
lie was not saved by his thoughts or feel- 
ings, but by the blood. God did not say, 
' When you see the blood, I will pass over 
you.' No ; but S when I see.' What gave 
the Israelite peace was the fact that Je- 
hovah's eye rested on the blood. This 
tranquilized his heart. The blood was out- 
side, and the Israelite inside, so that he 
could not possibly see it; but God saw 
it, and that was quite enough. 

" The application of this to the question 
of a sinner's peace is very plain. Christ, 
having shed his blood -as a perfect atone- 
ment for sin, has taken it into the presence 
<j f God and sprinkled it there ; and God's 



GROUND OF PEACE WITH GOD. VD 

testimony assures the believer that every 
thing is settled on his behalf. All the 
claims of justice have been fully answered ; 
sin has been perfectly put away, so that the 
full tide of redeeming love may roll down 
from the heart of God, along the channel 
which the sacrifice of Christ has opened 
for it. 

" To this truth the Holy Ghost bears 
witness. He ever sets forth the fact of 
God's estimate of the blood of Christ. He 
points the sinner's eye to the accomplished 
work of the cross. He declares that all is 
done ; that sin has been put far away, and 
righteousness brought nigh, — so nigh, that 
it is ' to all them that believe ,' Rom. hi. 22. 
Believe what ? Believe what God says, 
because he says it, not because they feel it. 

" Now, we are constantly prorte to look 
at something in ourselves as necessary to 
form the ground of peace. We are apt to 
regard the work of the Spirit in us, rather 
than the work of Christ for us, as the foun- 
dation of our peace. This is a mistake. 
We know that the operations of the Spirit 
of God have their proper place in Chris- 



76 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

tianity ; but his work is never set forth as 
that on which our peace depends. The 
Holy Ghost did not make peace, but Christ 
did ; the Holy Ghost is not said to be our 
peace, but Christ is, God did not send 
' preaching peace ? by the Holy Ghost, but 
4 by Jesus Christ ;' comp. Acts x. 86 ; Eph. 
ii. 14, 17 ; Col. i. 20. 

" The Holy Ghost reveals Christ ; he 
makes us to know, enjoy, and feed upon 
Christ. He bears witness to Christ ; takes 
of the things of Christ, and shows them 
unto us. He is the power of communion, 
the seal, the witness, the earnest, the unc- 
tion. In short, his operations are essen- 
tial. Without him, we can neither see, 
hear, know, feel, experience, enjoy, nor ex- 
hibit aught of Christ. This is plain, and 
is understood and admitted by every true 
and rightly-instructed Christian. 

" Yet, notwithstanding all this, the work 
of the Spirit is not the ground of peace, 
though he enables us to enjoy the peace. 
He is not our title, though he reveals our 
title, and enables us to enjoy it. The Holy 
Ghost is still carrying on his work in the 



GROUND OF PEACE WITH GoD. ( t 

soul of the believer. He ' maketh inter- 
cession with groanings which can not be ut- 
tered/ Rom. viii. 26. He labors to bring 
us into more entire conformity to the Lord 
Jesus Christ. His aim is < to present every 
man perfect in Christ/ Col. i. 28. He is 
the author of every right desire, every holy 
aspiration, every pure and heavenly affec- 
tion, every divine experience ; but his 
work in and with us will not be complete 

until we have left this present scene, and 
taken our place with Christ in the glory. 
Just as, in the case of Abraham's servant, 
his work was not complete until he pre- 
sented Rebekali to Isaac. 

" Not so the work of Christ for us ; that 
is absolutely and eternally complete. He 
could say, ' I have finished the work which 
thou gavest me to do,' John xvii. 4 ; and, 
again, i It is finished,' John xix. 30. The 
blessed Spirit can not yet say he has finish- 
ed the work. He has been patiently and 
faithfully working for the last eighteen 
hundred years as the true, the Divine Vi- 
car of Christ on earth. He still works 
amidst the various hostile influences which 



78 TEE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

surround the sphere of his operations. He 
still works in the hearts, of the people 
of God, in order to bring them up, practi- 
cally and experimentally, to the divinely 
appointed standard ; but he never teaches 
a soul to lean on his work, for peace in the 
presence of divine holiness. His office is 
to speak of Jesus. He does not speak of 
himself. ' He,' says Christ, ' shall receive 
of mine, and shall show it unto you,' John 
xvi. 4. He can only present Christ's work 
as the solid basis on which the soul must 
rest for ever. Yea, it is on the ground of 
Christ's perfect atonement that he takes 
up his abode and carries on his operations 
in the believer. ' In whom also, after that 
ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy 
Spirit of promise,' Eph. i. 13. No power 
or energy of the Holy Ghost could cancel 
sin ; the blood has done that. 4 The blood 
of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from 
all sin,' 1 John i. 7. 

"It is of the utmost importance to dis- 
tinguish between the Spirit's work in us 
and Christ's for us. Where they are con- 
founded, one rarely finds settled peace as 



GROUND OF PEACE WITH JOD. 79 

to the question of sin. The type of the 
passover illustrates the distinction very 
simply. The Israelite's peace was not 
founded upon the unleavened bread or the 
bitter herbs, but upon the blood. Nor was 
it, by any means, a question of wiiat he 
thought about the blood, but what God 
thought about it. This gives immense re- 
lief and comfort to the heart. God has 
found a ransom, and he reveals that ran- 
som to us sinners in order that we may 
rest therein, on the authority of his word, 
and by the grace of his Spirit. And albeit 
our thoughts and feelings must ever fall 
far short of the infinite preciousness of 
that ransom, yet, inasmuch as God tells us 
that he is perfectly satisfied about our 
sins, we may be satisfied also. Our con- 
science may well find settled rest where 
God's holiness finds rest. 

" Beloved reader, if you have not as yet 
found peace in Jesus, we pray you to pon- 
der this deeply. See the simplicity of the 
ground on which your peace is to rest. 
God is well pleased in the finished work 
of Christ, — 'well pleased for his righteous- 



80 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

ness' sake,' Isa. xlii. 21. That righteous- 
ness is not founded upon your feelings or 
experience, but upon the shed blood of the 
Lamb of God ; and hence your peace is 
not dependent upon your feelings or expe- 
rience, but upon the same precious blood 
which is of changeless efficacy and change- 
less value in the judgment of God. 

" What, then, remains for the believer ? 
To what is he called ? To keep the feast 
of unleavened bread, by putting away ev- 
ery thing contrary to the hallowed purity 
of his elevated position. It is his privilege 
to feed upon that precious Christ whose 
blood has canceled all his guilt. Being 
assured that the sword of the destroyer 
can not touch him, because it has fallen up- 
on Christ instead, it is for him to feast in 
holy repose within the blood-stricken door, 
under the perfect shelter which God's own 
love has provided in the blood of the cross. 

" May God the Holy Ghost lead every 
doubting, wavering heart to find rest in the 
divine testimony contained in those words, 
6 When I see the blood, I will pass over 
you: Exod. xiL 13." 



GROUND OF PEACE WITH GOD. 81 

" Until I saw the blood, 'twas hell my soul was fearing ; 
And dark and dreary in my eyes the future was appearing, 

While conscience told its tale of sin, 

And caused a weight of woe within. 

u But when I saw the blood, and looted at Him who shed it, 
My right to peace was seen at once, and I with transport 
read it . 

I found myself to God brought nigh, 

And ' Victory ■ became my cry. 

" My joy was in the blood, the news of which had told me, 
That spotless as the Lamb of God my Father could behold 
me; 
And all my boast was in his name 
Through whom this great salvation came. 

" And when with golden harps, the throne of God surround- 
ing, 
The white-robed saints around the throne their songs of joy 
are sounding, 
With them I'll praise that precious blood 
Which has redeemed our souls to God." 




CHAPTER VlIX 

REGENERATION THROUGH THE BLOOD OP J&8CJS. 

JEAR reader, — Jesus spoke of re- 
generation as essential to salva- 
tion ; and it is possible you may feel 
as if that experience stood between 
you and the " precious blood of 
Christ," 1 Pet. i. 19. It seems as if it did, 
but it does not ; for we are saved by the 
washing of regeneration and renewing of 
the Holy Ghost, which is " shed on us 
abundantly through Jesus Christ our Sav- 
iour," Titus iii. 6. It can clo you only 
good to consider the necessity of being born 
again, for it will show you at once your ut- 
ter helplessness and the all-sufficiency of the 
blood of Jesus alone to give you peace with 
God and a new heart. We do not shrink 
from the fullest statement of the truth of 
Scripture on this point ; for it will be found 

82 



REGENERATION. 83 

that it does not clash in the very least with 
the truth, which I am especially desirous to 
impart, that we are not accepted as right- 
eous in God's sight otherwise than in Christ ; 
for. says the Word, " He made him to be 
sin for us who knew no sin, that we might 
be made the righteousness of God in him." 
The necessity of being born again will show 
us only the more clearly that we must be 
saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Turn 
to and read the third chapter of the Gospel 
by John, and then ponder the following 
thoughts on this vitally important subject, 
and see how you are stripped of every plea 
for mercy arising from yourself, and laid 
down as a lost sinner at the" cross of Christ, 
needing to be saved by grace alone. 

Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, 
asserts the absolute necessity of regenera- 
tion when he says, " Verily, verily, I say 
unto thee, Except a man be born again, he 
can not see the kingdom of God,' 9 John hi. 
3. And farther on, he says, as solemnly 
and decidedly, " Except a man be born of 
water and of the Spirit, he can not enter 
into the kingdom of God," John iii. 5« 



84 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

And he gives a fact as the reason of this 
necessity : " That which is born of the flesh 
is flesh," John hi. 6. "Flesh," or corrupt 
human nature, — man as he is, — is unfit to 
enter God's kingdom, and will ever con- 
tinue so. No self-regeneration is to be ex- 
pected. The total depravity of human na- 
ture renders a radical spiritual change of 
absolute necessity. The whole race, and 
every individual " man," is utterly deprav- 
ed in heart, his will averse from good, his 
conscience is defiled, his understanding is 
darkened, his affections are alienated from 
God and set upon unworthy objects, his 
desires are corrupt, his appetites ungov- 
erned ; and, unless the Holy Spirit impart 
a new nature, and work an entire change 
on the whole faculties of his mind by " the 
washing of water through the word," 
cleansing away his filthiness of spirit as 
water cleanses away outward defilement, 
he must remain an unfit subject for God's 
holy kingdom. 

And observe that Jesus spoke of two 
classes only, — those who are "fleshly " and 
those who are " spiritual." We are natu- 



RE GENERA TIOX. 8 5 

rally connected — as are all mankind — 
with those who are " born of the flesh/' 
who, on that very account, can not even so 
much as " see the kingdom of God ; " and 
we can get out of our natural state only by 
a spiritual birth ; for only " that which is 
born of the Spirit is spirit," John iii. 6. 
All of us, being born of parents who were 
themselves fallen and corrupt, are necessa- 
rily infected by the hereditary taint of de- 
pravity of nature ; and, besides, " the car- 
nal mind is enmity against God, and is not 
subject to the law of God, neither indeed 
can be. So then they that are in the flesh 
can not please God," Rom. viii. 7, 8, and 
can not enter intb his kingdom. Attempts 
at morality are of no account with God. 
A moral Nicodemus was told he required 
something deeper and more comprehensive 
than conformity to a certain standard which 
passes with the world for morality. God's 
standard of holiness is not morality ', but 
spirituality. 

But some may say that, by publishing 
such extreme views, we may make many 



86 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

well-meaning persons feel disgusted at re- 
ligion, and go off from it altogether • 

But it is not our fault if they do so on 
account of the insufferableness of divine 
truth. Are you convinced that Scripture 
is right when it says, " The heart is deceit- 
ful above all things, and desperately wick- 
ed " ? Jer. xvii. 9. Do you believe that, as 
a man in the flesh, you are more like Sa- 
tan than God? — incapable of knowing, 
loving or serving God, and, although in 
reputation for the highest morality, utterly 
unfit for entering into Ills holy kingdom ? 

It is, no doubt, hard to believe that one's 
own self is so bad as I have indicated, and 
none but the Holy Spirit can truly con- 
vince us of it ; but does not Jesus repre- 
sent our condition as utterly depraved, — 
as flesh ? Does he not solemnly aver, that 
without a new birth from above, not one — 
no, not even a moral, learned, inquiring 
Nicodemus — can see or enter the kingdom 
of God ? He does not say that he may not, 
but that he can not, enter, — leaving it to be 
inferred that it is morally impossible. And 
this arises from the fact of its being a king- 



REGENERATION. 87 

doni, as well as from the fact cf our de- 
pravity. An anarchist has a decided dis- 
like to constitutional and settled govern- 
ment; so a man who hates the laws by 
which God's kingdom is governed can not 
be a loyal subject of his holy administra- 
tion. God would require to change his 
nature before he admitted any of us into 
his kingdom with our nature unchanged. 
But as God can not change, we must be 
changed, if we would see or enter his 
kingdom. Before we can be happy and 
loyal subjects of it, we must be " born 
again ; " and, being new creatures, have its 
laws written in our minds and hearts. 

Besides, as a professor in one of our col- 
leges has well remarked, "It is a princi- 
ple of our nature that, in order to happi- 
ness, there must be some correspondence 
betwixt the tastes, the dispositions, the 
habits of a man, and the scene in which 
he is placed, the society with which he min- 
gles, and the services in which he is em- 
ployed. A coward on the field of battle, a 
profligate in the house of prayer, a giddy 
worldling standing by a death-bed, a drunk? 



88 THE BLOLT) OF JESUS. 

ard in the company of holy men, feel in- 
stinctively that they are misplaced, — they 
have no enjoyment there." And what en- 
joyment could unregenerate men have in 
God's kingdom, on earth or in heaven ? * 
Even the outward service of the sanctu- 
ary below is distasteful to them, in pro- 
portion to . its spirituality. As long as 
preachers keep by the pictorial and illus- 
trative, and speak of the seasons of the 
year, the beautiful earth, and the ancient 
sea, mountains and plains, rivers and lakes, 
fields, flowers, and fruits, sun, moon, and 
stars, they comprehend the discourse and 
applaud it ; but when the deeply spiritual 
and eternally important form the theme, 
they feel listless, and characterize it as dull, 
prosy, and uninteresting. But if we can 
not enjoy a highly spiritual discourse, it 
must be because we are " carnal," and 
want the spiritual " sense " which always 



* Dr. Owen says, " If a man of a carnal mind is brought 
into a large company, he will have much to do ; if into a com- 
pany of Christians, he will feel little interest ; if into a small- 
er company engaged in religious exercises, he will feel less ; 
but if taken into a closet and forced to meditate upon God 
and eternity, this will be insupportable." 



REGENEKATIOX. 89 

accompanies the new birth ; for " the nat- 
ural man receiveth not the things of the 
Spirit of God ; for they are foolishness 
unto him : neither can he know them, be- 
cause they are spiritually discerned," 1 
Cor. ii. 14. And is it not an alarming 
truth, that this being born again is not a 
making of ourselves better, but a being 
made anew spiritually by God himself! 
This appears evident from what Jesus said 
during his conversation with Nicodemus. 
His words are these : " Except a man be 
born of water and of the Spirit, he can not 
enter into the kingdom of God," John hi. 
5. This great change is effected by the 
Holy Spirit, through means of the living 
water of the Word of God — the testimony 
of Jesus — and is of a spiritual nature, 
" for that which is born of the Spirit 
is spirit." It consists not in outward 
reformation, but inward transformation. 
We must be regenerated in soul in or- 
der to be truly reformed in life. The 
change is of such a nature that it is sure 
to be manifested outwardly if it exist in- 
wardly. If you wish to have a holy life, 



90 



THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 



you must be born again. Praying, weep- 
ing, striving against sin, and obeying God's 
laws, is just so much labor lost unless you 
have in the first place this born-again expe- 
rience. 

Ah ! but you say, as you read this hard 
saying, "This lays me entirely prostrate 
before God, a sick and dying sinner ; and I 
may give myself up to despair at once, for 
such an experience is utterly beyond my 
reach. " 

No, not at all ! You may well despair 
of self, for self is incurably bad ; but you 
are by this shut up to trust in Jesus "on- 
ly," Mark ix. 8. For, remember, Jesus 
continued to lay before this Jewish ruler 
atonement through himself, lifted up as a 
mediator, and God's free love to a perish- 
ing world, embodied in the gift and work 
of his Son. You want to be born again ? 
Well, Jesus would have you look to the 
Son of man lifted up, as Moses lifted up 
the serpent in the wilderness, and you will 
thus be pardoned and made to live. You 
say you are prostrated and helpless, — with 
the poison of the serpent coursing through 



REGEXERATIOX. 91 

you, — sick and dying, and you want to 
live, — to experience such a new life as 
shall prove not only a present counterac- 
tive to the virus of this terrible death- 
poison, but also an enduring spiritual real- 
ity? Well, Jesus says, in this conversa- 
tion with the inquiring ruler, that God so 
loved the world that he gave his only- 
begotten Son, that whosoever belie veth in 
him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life," John iii. 16. 

God sent his Son not to condemn the 
perishing men of the world to lie in their 
corrupt and diseased condition, and perish 
for ever, but that he himself might die that 
they might be pardoned and saved ! And 
those who are recovered from the disease 
of corruption tell us that they were " born 
again," not by lying in their corruption 
and crying for a new nature, and expect- 
ing it to come in some arbitrary and differ- 
ent way from that of faith ; but their uni- 
form testimony is, " Of his own will begat 
he us with the word of truth," James i. 
18 ; we are new creatures, " being born 
again by the word of God," 1 Pet. i. 23 ; 



92 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

and " whosoever believeth that Jesus is the 
Christ is born of God," * 1 John v. 1. 
The realization of regeneration being by- 
faith in Jesus, you must fill your eyes with 
the atoning cross if you would have your 
guilt removed, and you must direct your 
eyes to the risen living One at the right 
hand of God, and through him get out of 
the old creation with its condemnation and 
death, into the new creation with its justi- 
fication and life, if you would know what 
it is to be " born again," and have your 
heart filled with divine life. See Rom. vi. 
and Eph. ii. This is the truth which Je- 
sus taught in his conversation with Nico- 
demus ; and the whole drift of the Gospel 
in which it occurs is a copy of the mind of 
Christ on this point ; for the wr; ter says 
toward its close, " These are written, 
that ye might believe that Jesus is the 

* " Every one who really believes is said to be born of God ; 
and as every true believer is a converted man, it follows that 
the production of saving faith is equivalent to the work of 

regeneration Conversion properly consists in a 

sinner being brought actually, intelligently, and cordially to 
close and comply with God's revealed will on the subject of 
his salvation." — Professor Buchanan, D. D. y LL. I). 



REGENERATION. 93 



Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing 
ye might have life through his name," 
John xx. 31. 

If you still feel that you know nothing 
of being born again, bring your mind into 
broad and immediate contact with the 
whole of this conversation. Do not close 
the book and moan over the misery of your 
state, as it is now discovered to you by the 
awakening truths contained from ver. 3 to 
ver. 9 ; but go on until you take in the 
discovery of the plain, gracious, free, and 
righteous way of getting out of your death 
and misery, as you have it laid down by 
Jesus, when he speaks (from the fourteenth 
to the seventeenth verse) of his own all- 
sufficient sacrifice, and his Father's unex- 
ampled love and gracious purpose toward 
perishing sinners, and his willingness to 
save and give eternal life to every one who 
believes in him. " He that hath the Son 
hath life," 1 John v. 12. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FAITH IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS ESSENTIAL TO 
SALVATION. 

T is our belief of God's testimony con- 
cerning his own grace and Christ's 
work that brings us into possession of 
the blessings concerning which that 
testimony speaks. Our reception of 
God's testimony is confidence in God him- 
self, and in Christ Jesus his Son ; for 
where the testimony comes from a person, 
or regards a person, belief of the testimony 
and confidence in the person are things in- 
separable. Hence it is that Scripture 
sometimes speaks of confidence or trust as 
saving us (see the Psalms every where, 
such as xiii. 5, lii. 8 ; also 1 Tim. iv. 10, 
Eph. i. 12), as if it would say to the sin- 
ner, " Such is the gracious character of 
God that you have only to put your case 
in his hands, however bad it be, only to 

94 



FAITH ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION. 95 

trust him for eternal life, and he will as- 
suredly not put you to shame." Hence, 
also, it is, that we are said to be saved by 
the knowledge of God or of Christ ; that 
is, by simply knowing God as he has made 
himself known to us, Isa. liii. 11 ; 1 Tim. 
ii. 4 ; 2 Pet. ii. 20 ; for " this is life eter- 
nal, that they might know thee the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou 
hast sent," John xvii. 2. And, as if to 
make simplicity more simple, the apostle, 
in speaking of the facts of Christ's death 
and burial and resurrection, says, "By 
which also ye are saved, if ye keep in mem- 
ory what I preached unto you," 1 Cor. xv. 
1,2. 

God would have us understand that the 
way in which we become connected with 
Christ so as to get eternal life is by " know- 
ing" him, "hearing " him, or " trusting" 
him. The testimony is inseparably linked 
to the person testified of ; and our connec- 
tion with the testimony, by belief of it, 
thus links us to the person. Thus it is 
that faith forms the bond between us and 
th^ Son of God, not because of any thing 



96 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

in itself, but solely because it is only 
through the medium of truth known and 
believed that the soul can take any hold of 
Q ;)d or of Christ. Faith is nothing, save 
as it lays hold of Christ, and it does so by 
laying hold of the truth concerning him. 
" By grace are ye saved through faith ; and 
that not of yourselves; it is the gift of 
God," Eph. ii. 8. 

Faith, then, is the link, the one link, 
between the sinner and God's gift of par- 
don and life. It is not faith, and some- 
thing else along with it ; it is faith alone ; 
faith that takes God at his word, and 
gives him credit for speaking the hon- 
est truth when making known his mes- 
sage of grace, his " record" of eternal life 
concerning " the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sin of the world/' John i. 29. 

" If you object that you can not believe, 
then this indicates that you are proceeding 
quite in a wrong direction. You are still 
laboring under the idea that this believing 
is a work to be done by you, and not the 
acknowledgment of a work done by an- 
other. You would fain do something in 



FAITH ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION. 97 

order to get peace, and you think that if 
you couid only do this great thing, ' believ- 
ing,' — if you couid but perform this great 
act called faith, — God would at once re- 
ward you by giving you peace. Thus faith 
is reckoned by you to be the price in the 
sinner's hand by which he buys peace, and 
not the mere holding out of the hand to 
get a peace which has already been bought 
by another. So long as you are attaching 
any meritorious importance to faith, how- 
ever unconsciously, you are moving in a 
wrong direction, — a direction from which 
no peace can come. Surely faith is not a 
work. On the contrary, it is a ceasing from 
work. It is not a climbing of the mountain, 
but a ceasing to attempt it, and allowing 
Christ to carry you up in his own arms* 
You seem to think that it is your own act 
of faith that is to save you, and not the ob- 
ject of your faith, without which your own 
act, however well performed, is nothing. 
Accordingly, you bethink yourself, and say, 
6 What a mighty work is this believing ! — - 
what an effort does it require on my part ! 
— - how am I to perform it ? ' Herein you 



98 THE BLOCD OF JESUS. 

sadly err, and your mistake lies chiefly 
here, — in supposing that your peace is to 
come from the proper performance on your 
part of an act of faith, whereas it is to 
come entirely from the proper perception 
of Him to whom the Father is pointing 
your eye, and in regard to whom he is say- 
ing, < Behold my servant whom I have cho^- 
sen, look at him, forget every thing else,— 
every thing about yourself, your own faith ? 
your own repentance, your own feelings, — 
and look at Him V It is in Him, and not 
in your poor act of faith, that salvation 
lies, and out of Him, not out of your own 
act of faith is peace to come. 

" Thus mistaking the meaning of faith, 
and the way in which faith saves you, you 
get into confusion, and mistake every 
thing else connected with your peace. 
You mistake the real nature of that very 
inability to believe, of which you complain 
so sadly. For that inability does not lie, 
as you fancy it does, in the impossibility of 
your performing aright this great act of 
faith, but of ceasing from all such self- 
righteous attempts to perform any act, or 



FAITH ESSENTIAL TO SALVATIOX. 99 

do any work whatsoever, in order to your 
being saved. So that the real truth is, that 
you have not yet seen such a sufficiency in 
the one great work of the Son of God up- 
on the cross as to lead you utterly to dis- 
continue your mistaken and aimless efforts 
to work out something of your own. As 
soon as the Holy Spirit shows you have this 
entire sufficiency of the great propitiation, 
you cease at once from these attempts to 
act or work something of your own, and 
take, instead of this, what Christ has done. 
One great part of the Spirit's work is, not 
to enable the man to do something which 
will help to save him, but so to detach him 
from his own performances that he shall be 
content with the salvation which Christ fin- 
ished when he died and rose again. 

" But perhaps you may object further, 
that you are not satisfied with your faith. 
No, truly, nor are you ever likely to be ; 
if you wait for this before you take peace, 
you will wait till life is done. The Bible 
does not say, ' Being satisfied about our 
faith, we have peace with God ; ' it simply 
says, ' Being justified by faith, we have 



100 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

peace with God,' Rom. v. 1. Not satisfac- 
tion with your own faith, but satisfaction 
with Jesus and his work, — this is what 
God presses on you. You say, ' I am sat- 
isfied with Christ.' Are you ? What more 
then do you wish ? Is not satisfaction with 
Christ enough for you, or for any sinner ? 
Nay, and is not this the truest kind of 
faith ? To be satisfied ivith Christ, that is 
faith in Christ. To be satisfied with his 
blood, that is faith in his blood. What 
more could you have ? Can your faith 
give you something which Christ can 
not ? or will Christ give you nothing till 
you can produce faith of a certain kind 
and quality, whose excellences will entitle 
you to blessing ? Do not bewilder your- 
self. Do not suppose that your faith is a 
price, or a bribe, or a merit. Is not the 
very essence of real faith just your being 
satisfied with Christ ? Are you really sat- 
isfied with him, and with what he has 
done ? Then do not puzzle yourself about 
your faith, but go upon your way rejoic- 
ing, having thus been brought to be satis- 
fied with him, whom to know is peace and 
life and salvation. 



FAITH ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION. 101 

" You are not satisfied with your faith, 
you say. I am glad that you are not. 
Had you been so, you would have been 
far out of the way indeed. Does Scrip- 
ture any where speak of your getting peace 
by your becoming satisfied with your faith ? 
Nay, does it not take for granted that you 
will, to the very last, be dissatisfied with 
yourself, with your faith, with all about 
you and within you, and satisfied with 
Jesus only ? Are you then satisfied with 
him? Then go in peace. For if sat- 
isfaction with him will not give you 
peace, nothing else that either heaven or 
earth contains will ever give you peace. 
Though your faith should become so per- 
fect that you were entirely satisfied with it, 
that would not pacify your conscience, or 
relieve your fears. Faith, however perfect, 
has of itself .nothing to give you, either of 
pardon or of life. Its finger points you 
to Jesus. Its voice bids you look straight 
to him. Its object is to turn away from 
itself and from yourself altogether, that 
you may behold him, and in beholding him 



102 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

be satisfied with him ; and, in being satis- 
fied with him, have ' joy and peace.' " * 

" Faith is not what we feel or see ; 
It is a simple trust 
In what the God of love has said 
Of Jesus as the ' Just.' 

" What Jesus is, — and that alone 

Is faith's delightful plea ; 

It never deals with sinful self 

Nor righteous self, in me. 

" It tells me I am counted ' dead ' 
By God, in his own Word ; 
It tells me I am f born again ? 
In Christ, my risen Lord. 

" If he is free, then I am free, 
From all unrighteousness ; 
If he is just, then I am just, 
He is my righteousness." 

* " Words for the Inquiring," by Horatius Sonar, D. D. 






CHAPTER X. 

THE BLOOD OF JESUS THE BELIEVER^ LIFE AND 
PEACE. 

NOW leave off addressing myself spe- 
cially to the unconverted awaken- 
ed, that I may lay a few thoughts 
before brethren in Christ who are 
awakening to a deeper sense of their 
obligations and responsibilities. 

We are living in a most important era of 
our world's history ! How melancholy the 
condition, and how ominous of evil the at- 
titude of earth's nations ! Warlike pow- 
ers confront each other, and the blood of 
their embattled hosts is shed in torrents ! 
How persevering and successful is man in 
carrying forward his gigantic schemes and 
favorite movements ! Strange is it, also, 
that an all but universal cry for regenera- 
tion among earth's nations should be made 
simultaneously with a cry for the Holy 

103 



104 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

Ghost to achieve for the professing church 
a mighty spiritual revival. 

We can not help being stimulated in our 
exertions for the cause of Christ, by con- 
tiguity to unceasing earthly activity mani- 
fested on every side ; but were this our 
only incentive to action, our zeal would be 
spurious ; for all effort and activity in pro- 
moting the gospel which are the offspring 
of mere imitation, and originate only in 
proximity to the activity displayed by the 
world, instead of being based on personal 
faith in Christ and living communion with 
God, form nothing higher and nothing bet- 
ter than " a fair show in the flesh." 

But we have reason to believe that a 
mighty breath of the Divine Spirit is now 
passing over the earth. The church of the 
living God, scattered throughout tho differ- 
ent denominations, has been feeling its in- 
fluence ; and the result of his gracious 
presence and quickening power is appear- 
ing in greatly increased religious activity 
and zeal for the conversion of souls, This 
is matter for thankfulness. We need to 
have a renewal of our youth that we may 



THE BELIEVERS LIFE AXD PEACE. 105 

be healthy, fresh, and vigorous to engage 
energetically in the great work that is to be 
done for God in these eventful days that 
are now passing over us. And let us ever 
bear in mind that the grand prerequisite to 
thorough usefulness is, that we ourselves 
should be " strengthened with might by 
his Spirit in the inner man ; that Christ 
may dwell in your hearts by faith ; that ye, 
being rooted and grounded in love, may be 
able to comprehend with all saints what 
is the breadth and length and depth and 
hight; and to know the love of Christ, 
which passeth knowledge, that ye might be 
filled with all the fullness of God," Eph. 
hi. 16-19. If we would be filled with the 
grace of God and refreshed in our souls, it 
is essential, at such a time as the present, 
that we should constantly recall and deep- 
ly ponder the great foundation-truths on 
which we rested at the time of our conver- 
sion. " Looking unto Jesus," Heb. xii. 2, 
is the most refreshing exercise in which 
we can engage; and the shortest road to 
genuine spiritual revival is by the cross of 
Calvary, 



106 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

When the Rev. W. H. Hewitson was on 
his death-bed, and had several texts illus- 
trative of the faithfulness of God quoted 
to him by a friend, he remarked, after his 
friend had withdrawn, — " Texts like these 
do not give me so* much comfort as ' God 
so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life,' John iii. 16 ; or, ' He that spared 
not his own Son, but delivered him up 
for us all, how shall he not with him also 
freely give us all things?' Rom. viii. 32. 
Plain doctrinal statements, exhibiting the 
heart of God, are more sustaining to me 
than mere promises. I like to get into 
contact with the living person." This ex- 
perience is very common in such circum- 
stances. When the most intelligent Chris- 
tian draws near to death, he feels that he 
can rest with confidence on nothing except 
the great elementary truths of God's glori- 
ous gospel, and the living person of his 
risen Son. And when we are in a state of 
spiritual decay ; when our " soul is fill of 
troubles, and our life draweth nigh unto 



THE BELIEVER'S LIFE AND PEJCE. 107 

the grave," Ps. lxxxviii. 3 ; when our 
" spirit is overwhelmed, and our heart 
within us is desolate," Ps. exliii. 4 ; there 
is nothing so reviving and invigorating as 
the leading fundamental truths of the gos- 
pel of Christ. The faithful saying, " that 
Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners, of whom I am chief," 1 Tim. i. 
15, is at once the means of reviving the 
Christian, and of giving life to the self- 
despairing sinner ; for the gospel is " the 
power of God unto salvation to every one 
that believeth," Rom. i. 16. "None but 
Jesus " can avail us either for peace of con- 
science with reference to past transgres- 
sions, peace of heart with reference to pres- 
ent circumstances, or for peace of mind 
with reference to future prospects. This is 
not theory, but experience, as every child 
of God knows. 

" I feel," writes another, " that nothing 
can do me good but personal contact with 
the living person of the Lord Jesus. Look- 
ing at systems and creeds, doctrines and 
duties, may be all very well in its own 
place, but if I am to be a healthy, fruit* 



108 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

bearing Christian, I must look steadily and 
confidingly to the great High Priest who 
assumed our nature to bear our sins and 
win our confidence. When, by faith, we 
are enabled to fix a steady gaze on Jesus, 
how little do we care for the smile or frown 
of the world ! *■ Looking unto Jesus ' en- 
ables the ' worm Jacob ' to ' thresh the 
mountains, and beat them small, and make 
the hills as chaff,' Isa. xli. 15. But I of- 
ten feel that it is a very difficult matter 
to look away from myself, though I am 
sure I never get any thing there to make 
me feel happy. No, all is in my Redeemer, 
and it is only when I am looking to him 
as ' all my salvation' that I feel satisfied, 
and think I could face death with compos- 
ure." . 

The late Lady Colquhoun was one who 
knew the preciousness and power of resting 
on Christ Jesus alone for peace, comfort, 
and salvation, and from personal experi- 
ence she was " able to teach others also." 
Writing to a young friend, she gave this 
excellent counsel : " As well in our win- 
ters as our summers the foundation stand- 



THE BELIEVER'S LIFE AND PJACE. 109 

eth < sure, — Christ is all.' With him is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning. 
Precious truth ! Let us rest upon it, and 
cease from the vain endeavor to find any 
thing in us that can give the shadow of 
hope. Abiding hope must be fixed on the 
object that changeth not. We change daily, 
hourly. He remains glorious in holiness 
eternally. And this perfection is in the 
court of heaven our representative. Can 
we want more ? Shall we say, I will add a 
few of my virtues and graces to the ac- 
count ? When we are guilty of this folly, 
we weary ourselves seeking for them, for 
they can not be found, and our harp hangs 
upon the willows. But we resume the 
songs of Zion when we look entirely from 
ourselves to ' the Lord our righteousness.' 
How is it with you, dear A. ? Can you 
rejoice in the Lord always ? If not, expe- 
rience will teach you that living on frames 
and feelings will not do, — that comfort 
ebbs and flows with them, — and that you 
equally delude yourself when you take 
comfort from the feeling of nearness to 
God, or when you lose it because you lack 



110 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

that joy in devotional exercises which 
is, nevertheless, extremely desirable and 
much to be prized. This, however, is 
distinct from joy in Christ crucified, and 
in Christ our righteousness ; and it is very 
possible to feel little heart for prayer, and 
to mourn an absent God, and yet to stand 
firm on the sure foundation, rejoicing in 
Christ, and neVer doubting that we are 
complete in him." 

The reason why many real Christians 
are harassed with doubts, fears, and dark- 
ness, is that they leave off leaning entirely 
upon their beloved Saviour, and rest part 
of the weight of their souls' eternal well- 
being on their own experience. The fruits 
of righteousness, wrought in us by the 
grace of the Holy Spirit, are precious as 
evidences, but they can not be trusted as 
grounds of salvation, unless with much 
spiritual detriment to our souls. Legh 
Richmond, writing to his mother, says,— 
"Your occasional doubts and fears arise 
from too much considering faith and repent- 
ance as the grounds, rather than the evi- 
dences , of salvation. Our salvation is not 



THE BELIEVERS LIFE AND PEACE. Ill 

because we do well, but because He in 
whom we trust hath done all tilings well. 
The believing sinner is never more happy 
and secure than when, at the same moment, 
he beholds and feels his own vileness and 
also his Saviour's excellence. You look 
at yourself too much, and at the infinite 
price paid for you too little. For con- 
viction you must look at yourself, but 
for comfort at your Saviour. Thus the 
wounded Israelites were to look only at the 
brazen serpent for recovery. The graces 
of the Spirit are good things for others to 
judge us by, but it is Christ himself re- 
ceived, believed in, rested upon, loved, and 
followed, that will speak peace to our- 
selves. By looking unto him we shall 
grow holy ; and the more holy we grow, 
the more we shall mourn over sin, and be 
sensible how very far short we come of 
what we yet desire to be. While our sane- 
tification is a gradual and still imperfect 
work, our justification is perfect and com- 
plete ; the former is wrought in us, the lat- 
ter for us. Rely simply as a worthless sin- 
ner on the Saviour, and the latter is all 



112 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

your own, with the accompanying blessings 
of pardon, acceptance, adoption, and the 
non-imputation of sin to your charge. 
Hence will flow thankful obedience, devot- 
edness of heart, &c. This salvation is by 
faith alone, and thus saving-faith works 
by love. Embrace these principles freely, 
fully, and impartially, and you will enjoy a 
truly scriptural peace, assurance, and com- 
fort." 

" For if Christ be born within, 

Soon that likeness shall appear 
Which the heart had lost through sin, — 

God's own image fair and clear; 
And the soul serene and bright 
Mirrors back his heavenly light." 






CHAPTER XI. 

FAITH IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS THE SPBING OF 
HOLINESS. 



>T is noteworthy that the apostle Paul, 
who most strenuously upholds jus- 
tification by faith in Jesus, always 
|j? connects it with holy living, and fre- 
quently shows that it is the firm be- 
lief of the truth of the doctrine that leads 
to new obedience in the life. In his epistle 
to Titus, after speaking of " Jesus Christ 
our Saviour," and " being justified by his 
grace," and "made heirs according to the 
hope of eternal life," he directs that the 
doctrine of salvation by free grace alone 
should be affirmed constantly in order that 
believers might maintain good works, Ti- 
tus iii. 4-8. And there can never be 
good works but on the principle of be- 
ing "justified by the faith of Christ, and 
not by the works of the law," Gal, ii. 16. 

8 113 



114 THE BLOOD OF JESUS, 

We never do good works until we do them 
because we are saved, not in order to be so. 
A lively sense of many sins forgiven will 
make us love much and show it practically., 
Luke vii. 47. And we should have such 
vital connection with Christ, and such 
intimate fellowship with him, as will ex- 
clude all surmisings as to our acceptance. 
If we are to render Paul-like service, we 
must exercise Paul-like faith, and enjoy 
Paul-like experience. And this is a record 
of how he believed and lived: " I am cru- 
cified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet 
not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life 
which I now live in the flesh I live by the 
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, 
and gave himself for me," (Gal. ii. 20.) 
We must be well assured of the love of 
God in Christ Jesus, to our own souls in 
particular, before we will be able to say, 
" This one thing I do : I strive to be holy 
as God is holy." " Saving faith," says one 
of the best of the old writers, " has always 
a sanctifying and comforting influence. 
The true believer does not divide righteous- 
ness from sanctification, nor pardon from 



FAITH FHE SPRING OF HOLINELS. 115 

purity. Yea, he comes to Christ for the 
remission of sins for the right end ; and 
that is, that, being freed from the guilt of 
sin, we may be freed from the dominion of 
it. Knowing that there is forgiveness with 
him that he might be feared, he does not 
believe in remission of sin that he may in- 
dulge himself in the commission of sin. No, 
no ; the blood of Christ, that purges the con- 
science from the guilt of sin, does also purge 
the conscience from dead works to serve the 
living God. They that come to Christ in a 
scriptural way come to him for righteous- 
ness, that they may have him also for sancti- 
lication ; otherwise, the man does not really 
desire the favor and enjoyment of God, or 
to be in friendship with him who is a holy 
God. The true believer employs Christ 
for making him holy as well as happy, and 
hence draws virtue from him for killing 
sin, and quickening him in the way of 
duty. The faith that can never keep you 
from sin will never keep you out of hell ; 
and the faith that can not carry you to your 
duty will not carry you to heaven. Justi- 
fying faith is a sanctifying grace. It is 



11G THE BLOOD 01 JESUS. 

true, as it sanctifies it does not justify ; 
but that faith which justifies does also sanc- 
tify. As the sun that enlighteneth hath 
heat with it ; but it is not the heat of the 
sun that enlightens, but the light thereof ; 
so that faith which justifies hath love and 
sanctity with it ; but it is not the love and 
sanctity that justify, but faith as closing 
with Christ. 

" If a man hath no faith in the Lord's 
goodness, no hope of his favor in Christ, 
where is his purity and holiness ? Nay, it 
is he that hath this hope that purifies him- 
self as God is pure. I know not what ex- 
perience you have, but some of us know, 
that when our souls are most comforted 
and enlarged with the faith of God's favor 
through Christ, and with the hope of his 
goodness, then we have most heart to our 
duties ; and when, through unbelief, we 
have harsh thoughts of God as an angry 
judge, then we have no heart to duties and 
religious exercises ; and I persuade myself 
this is the experience of the saints in all 
ages." There is thus an inseparable con- 
nection between our believing the love of 



FAITH THE SPBING OF HOLINESS. 117 

God to us in Christ Jesus, holiness, and 
spiritual comfort. Unless we " dr.itw near 
with a true heart in full assurance of 
faith," we can not expect to have " our 
hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, 
and our bodies washed with pure water, 55 
Heb. x. 22. 

And as the blood of Jesus is our ground 
of confidence in coming to God at the first 
for forgiveness of our sins, our mainstay in 
trouble, and the spring of all worthy obe- 
dience, so must it be our only plea in ap- 
proaching our heavenly Father for all 
needed spiritual blessings. If we wish to 
have our own souls quickened and revived, 
or a great work of the Spirit achieved 
throughout the land, and millions of souls 
converted, the name of Jesus must be our 
only plea, as we come to plead for these 
blessings at the throne of grace. " In all 
true prayer," says another, "great stress 
should be laid on the blood of Jesus : per- 
haps no evidence distinguishes a declension 
in the power and spirituality of prayer 
more strongly than an overlooking of this. 
Where the atoning blood is kept out of 



118 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

view, not recognized, not pleaded, not 
made the grand plea, there is a deficiency 
of power in prayer. Words are nothing, 
fluency of expression nothing, niceties of 
language and brilliancy of thought noth- 
ing, where the blood of Christ — the new 
and living way of access to God, the grand 
plea that moves Omnipotence, that gives 
admission within the holy of holies — ■ is 
slighted, undervalued, and not made the 
groundwork of every petition. Oh, how 
much is this overlooked in our prayers, — 
how is the atoning blood of Immanuel 
slighted ! How little mention we hear of 
it in the sanctuary, in the pulpit, in the 
social circle ! Whereas, it is this that 
makes prayer what it is with God. All 
prayer is acceptable with God, and only so, 
as it comes up perfumed with the blood of 
Christ ; all prayer is answered as it urges 
the blood of Christ as its plea ; it is the 
blood of Christ that satisfies justice, and 
meets all the demands of the law against 
us ; it is the blood of Christ that purchases 
and brings down every blessing into the 
soul ; it is the blood of Christ that sues 



FAITH THE SPRING OF HOLINESS. 119 

for the fulfillment of his last will and 
testament, every precious legacy of which 
comes to us solely on account of his 
death ; this it is, too, that gives us bold- 
ness at the throne of grace. How can a 
poor sinner approach without this ? How 
can he look up? — how can he ask? — 
Slow can he present himself before a holy 
God? — but as he brings in the hand of 
faith the precious biood of Jesus. Out of 
Christ, God can hold no communication 
with us ; all intercourse is suspended ; 
every avenue of approach is closed ; all 
blessing is withheld. God has crowned his 
dearly-beloved Son, and he will have us 
crown him too ; and never do we place a 
brighter crown upon his blessed head than 
when we plead his finished righteousness 
as the ground of our acceptance, and his 
atoning blood as our great argument for 
the bestowment of all blessing with God, 
If, then, dear reader, you feel yourself to 
be a poor, vile, unholy sinner, — -if a back- 
fslider, whose feet have wandered from the 
Lord, in whose soul the spirit of prayer 
has deelined v and yet still feel some secrei 



120 * THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

longing to return, and dare not Decause 
so vile, so unholy, so backsliding ; yet you 
may return, ' having boldness to enter into 
the holiest by the blood of Jesus,' Heb. x. 
19. Come, for the blood of Jesus pleads; 
return, for the blood of Jesus gives you 
welcome." " If any man sin, we have an 
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the 
righteous," 1 John iL 1. And if you are 
stirred in spirit for the souls of the perish- 
ing around you that they may be saved, 
and for the work of God that it may be re- 
vived, make mention of the blood of Jesus, 
and you may rest satisfied that you have 
the petitions that you " desired of him," 1 
John v. 15. Jesus has passed his word, 
that on doing" this you shall obtain the de- 
sires of your heart ; for he says, " If ye 
abide in me, and my words abide in you, 
ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be 
done unto you," John xv. 7. " Verily 
verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall 
ask the Father in my name, he will give it 
you. .... Ask, and ye shall receive, that 
your joy may be full," John xvi. 23, 24. 
If, then, there be no great revival of God's: 



FAITH THE SPRING OF HOLINESS. 121 

work, no great awakening and conversion 
of perishing souls, may it not be because 
this sin lieth at our door, that we have not 
used the blood of Jesus as our all-prevailing 
plea in prayer ? Oh ! let us no longer em- 
ploy that "precious blood" so sparingly 
in our pleadings for revival, but let us urge 
it as our only and our constant plea, and 
prove God herewith, whether he will not 
open to us the windows of heaven, and 
pour us out a blessing, that there shall not 
be room enough to receive it, Mai. iii. 10, 




CHAPTER XIL 

THE BLOOD OF JESUS THE ESSENCE OF THE 
GOSPEL. 

UR matured conviction is that the 
great thing needed at present is 
not so much revival sermons or 
revival prayer-meetings as revival 
truth ; and as the very essence of 
that truth is "the gospel of God concerning 
his Son Jesus Christ our Lord," Rom. i. 1, 
2, — or, in other words, the testimony of 
the Holy Ghost (externally in the preach- 
ing of the word, and internally in its 
spiritual application) to the all-sufficiency 
and infallible efficacy of " the precious 
blood of Christ," 1 Pet. i. 19, — that 
which is preeminently required in order to 
the general revival of religion is a full, 
clear, intelligent, and earnest utterance of 
the grand leading doctrines of " the gospel 
of the grace of God," Acts xx. 24. True 

122 



THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL. 123 

revival is not obtainable by merely preach- 
ing about revival, but by the constant procla- 
mation of that all-important truth winch is 
employed by the Holy Ghost to produce : it 
— that " Christ also hath once suffered to 
sins, the just for the unjust, that he nugnt 
Ling us to God," 1 Pet. hi- 18- He wdl 

prove the most effective preacher m bring- 
ing about a holy, deep, spiritual revival, 
who gives the greatest prominence to these 
three great facts: "That Christ died for 
our sins according to the Scriptures ; and 
that he was buried ; and that he rose again 
the third day according to the Scnptures, 
1 Cor sv 3,4. And I am convinced that 
the reason why so many ministers exhaust 
nearly all their converting power (I mean 
instrumentally) during the first few years 
of their ministry, while some continue to 
possess it, and finish their course with joy 
t greatly owing to the former leaving the 
simplicity that is in Christ and betaking 
themselves to sermon-wntmg about sec- 
ondary matters, while the latter make 
Christ crucified their « Alpha and Omega 
Oh that all the ministers of Jesus Chnst 



12 4 TIIE £L00D 0J? JESUSi 

would return, for a few months at least 
every year, to all the common texts from 
which they preached discourses which 

seemed to be so much blessed to awaken 
and save souls in the early days of their 
-aistry! WeretheytotaLa'seriero 

such texts as Matt. xi. 28; John hi. 16 • 
Kom.i >16;1CoriL2 . 1T . m;Li2 _ i7: 

1 John i. 7; and, after re-studying them' 
and brmgmg all the light of their reading 
spiritual msight, and experience to bear 
upon the exposition and enforcement of 
them, to preach from them with the Holy 
Grhost, and with a lively faith that, by the 
grace of the Holy Spirit accompanying 
their preaching, the unconverted among 
their people would be immediately convert, 
ed, there might be a great and general 
awakening, and tens of thousands might 
be added to the Lord. & 

It is also of vast importance to present 
he truth of the gospel as the Hoi/gToI 
himself has presented it to us in "the word 

tl^'f 1 - 11116 - 1 * 1 - ^en well said 
that the derangement of God's order of 
truth is qnite as dangerous and far more 



THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL. 125 

subtle than the denial of the truth itself. 
In fact, to reverse the order is to deny the 
truth. We are not merely to maintain both 
Christ's work and the Spirit's work in their 
individual integrity, but in their exact 
Scriptural order." We believe that the re- 
freshing truth, that " the blood of Jesus 
Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin," 
1 John i. 7, is the great central sun which 
sheds a flood of light on the whole system 
of divine revelation. Atonement by the 
blood-shedding of Christ is the substratum 
of Christianity ; for the sole ground of a 
sinner's peace with God is the blood of 
Jesus. We who were at one time "far 
off are made nigh by the blood of Christ ; 
for he is our peace," Eph. ii. 13, 14, " in 
whom we have redemption through his 
blood, the forgiveness of sins," Eph. i. 7 ; 
and so, " being justified freely by his grace 
through the redemption that is iri Christ 
Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a 
propitiation through faith in his blood," 
Rom. iii. 24, 25, " we have peace with God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ ; by whom 
also wo have access by faith into this grace 



126 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

wherein we stand, and rejoice in liopo 
of tlie glory of God," Rom. v. 1, 2.. 

In the Westminster Assembly's Shorter 
Catechism, which is considered by all 
orthodox people to be an excellent sum- 
mary of Christian doctrine, you will find 
the very same truth stated which we have 
advanced and confirmed by the above quo- 
tations. The answer to the question in that 
Catechism, " What doth God require of us 
that we may escape his wrath and curse due 
to us for sin ? V commences with, " God re- 
quireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repent- 
ance unto life," &c. Now, this shows that 
the framers of that symbol of sound doc- 
trine were accurate in their conceptions, 
and precise in their statement of the order 
and position of this great Scriptural truth. 
They suppose an anxious inquirer desirous 
of knowing how he is to escape the wrath 
and curse of God due to him for sin ; and 
do they say that the first thing he is to do 
is to pray for the Holy Spirit, and get his 
mind changed and his unholy heart sanc- 
tified, previously to his believing in Jesus ? 
No. The very first thing they teach the 



THE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL. 127 

awakened sinner to do is, to believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Now this 
is all the more remarkable, considering 
that, when laying clown the system of 
divine truth theologically, they had placed 
effectual calling by the Divine Spirit before 
justification by faith. There they speak to 
the intellect of the converted man and in- 
structed Christian ; but here the matter is 
reversed when an anxious sinner is to be 
guided as to what he is to do to be saved, 
and we have faith in Jesus Christ placed 
before repentance unto life ; showing us 
that they held that, while we must ever ac- 
knowledge the necessity of the Holy Spirit's 
work in order to the creation and exercise 
of saving faith, we should never direct an 
anxious sinner to look to the Spirit as his 
Saviour, but to Christ alone ; never direct 
an inquirer to seek first an inward change, 
but an outward one, — a justified state in 
order to enjoying a sanctified heart, — the 
former being the necessary precursor of the 
latter. 

Repentance is, properly speaking, a 
change of mind, or a new mind about God j 



128 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

regeneration is a change of heart, or a new 
heart toward God ; conversion is a change 
of life, or a new life for God ; adoption is 
a change of family, or a new relationship 
to God ; sanctification is a change of em- 
ployment, or a consecration of all to God ; 
glorification is a change of place, or a 
new condition with God ; bnt justification, 
which is a change of state, or a new stand- 
ing before God, must be presented to the 
anxious inquirer as going before all ; for be- 
ing " accepted in the Beloved » is the foun- 
dation and cause of all, or, more properly 
speaking, the precious seed from which 
all the rest spring, blossom, and bear fruit ; 
and, consequently, the first and great duty 
of those who have to deal with awakened 
souls is to make this very clear, and to keep 
them incessantly in contact with the bless- 
ed evangelical truth, "That a man is not 
justified by the works of the law, but by 
the faith of Jesus Christ," Gal. ii. 16. 

From all this you will observe, dear 
reader, that I am not settling the position 
which a doctrine in theology ought to hold, 
but simply dealing with the practical ne- 



TI E ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL. 129 

cessities of an anxious inquirer. Were I 
called upon to state my views theoreti- 
cally, I would say, they are described by 
what another has termed Jehovahism, " for 
of him, and through him, and to him, are 
all things ; to whom be glory for ever," 
Rom. xi. 36 ; but I am not contemplating 
the sinner as standing before the throne of 
glory, but before the throne of grace ; and 
I am not endeavoring to settle a subtle 
question in theology, but to give the prac- 
tical solution of an urgent question of sal- 
vation. I am not attempting to lay down 
a system of divinity, but to discover the 
kind and order of truth divinely appointed 
and fitted to bring immediate peace to 
awakened and inquiring souls. And, hop- 
ing to accomplish this most important 
end, I present " Jesus only," "for he is 
our peace," who "having made peace 
through the blood of his cross," Col. i. 20, 
has come " and preached peace," Eph. iL 
17, by his " everlasting gospel," to them 
" who were afar off, and to them that were 
nigh." 

The first practical stop toward realizing 

9 



130 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

and acknowledging the sovereignty of God 
is to " let the peace of God rule in your 
hearts," Col. iii. 15. You may hold a 
sound creed with a proud, unbroken heart, 
and be more deeply damned on that very 
account. But if you wish to know God in 
all the glory of his being and attributes, 
you must grasp the manifestation of that 
glory as it is embodied and manifested in 
the person of Jesus Christ. You can know 
the glory of God as a sovereign only by 
realizing his grace as a Saviour. For " God 
was manifest in the flesh," 1 Tim. iii. 16. 
"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt 
among us, (and we beheld his glory, the 
glory as of the only-begotten of the Fa- 
ther,) full of grace and truth," John i. 14. 
"Neither knoweth any man the Father ? 
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
Son will reveal him," Matt. xi. 27. 

" A mind at ' perfect peace ? with God; 
Oh, what a word is this ! 
A sinner reconciled through blood, — 
This, this, indeed, is peace I 

** By nature and by practice far — 
How very far ! — from God ; 
Yet now by grace brought nigh to him ? 
Through faith in Jesus' blood* 



TEE ESSENCE OF THE GOSPEL. 131 

" So nigh, so very nigh, to God, 
I can not nearer be ; 
For, in the person of his Son, 
I am as near as he. 

u So dear, so very dear to God, 
More dear I can not be ; 
The love wherewith he loves the Son, 
Such is his love to me. 

" Why should I ever careful be, 
Since such a God is mine ? 
He watches o'er me night and day, 
And tells me, * Mine is thine.' " 




CHAPTER XIII. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT'S TESTIMONY TO THE BLOOD OF 
JESUS. 

(53^HE great work which the Holy 
^flfr) Spirit is now occupied in perform- 
ing, is that of directing sinners to 
Jesus, and inclining and enabling 
them to come to him, that they 
may be saved; and since this is the case, I 
h am a fellow-worker with God the Holy 
Spirit only in so far as I tell anxious sin- 
ners to look to Jesus only, and have " re- 
demption through his blood, the forgive- 
ness of sins," as their first and great 
business ; and " this one thing I do/' 

The question is not, whether we think 
it Scriptural for an awakened sinner to de- 
sire the secret and power-giving presence 
of the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of his 
understanding and show him the all-suf- 
ficiency of Christ. That is what neither 

132 



THE HOLY SPIRIT'S TESTIMONY. 133 

we nor any other true Christian would for 
a moment think of forbidding. Nor is it 
the question, whether the work of the Holy 
Spirit be necessary in order to salvation. 
The very fact of writing as we have done 
on regeneration, in a previous chapter, 
will satisfy all ingenuous minds that we 
hold the absolute necessity of the work of 
the Holy Spirit in order to the regenera- 
tion and conversion of perishing souls. 

The only question, then, which falls to 
be considered is, What am I to say to an 
awakened and anxious sinner ? Am I to 
say simply, " Believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and thou shalt be saved," Acts xvi. 
31, as said the apostle of the Gentiles to 
the trembling jailer of Philippi ? or am I, 
as the first thing I do, to exhort him to 
pray for the Holy Spirit to convince him 
more deeply of his sin, enlighten his dark- 
ened understanding, renew his perverse 
will, and enable him to believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ to the saving of his soul? 
Am I to direct him, as the grand thing he 
has to do, to believe in Jesus, and accept 
his blood-shediing as the only foundation 



134 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

of his peace with God ; or to seek the 
work of the Spirit as an addition to Christ's 
work in order that he may be justified ? 
The former leads to justification by faith 
alone, the true Protestant doctrine of the 
Churches of the Reformation ; the latter 
leads to justification by sanctification, the 
pernicious doctrine of the great apostasy, 
by embracing which a man can never reach 
any satisfactory assurance that his sins are 
pardoned, even after a lifetime's religious 
experience and devout and sincere perform- 
ance of religious duties ; * whereas, by 

* This is referred to in a forcible and memorable manner 
by Thomas Adams, one of the old Puritans, when he is dis- 
coursing on il the first-born which are written in heaven : " — 
" Woe," says he, " to that religion which teacheth even the 
best saint to doubt of his salvation while he liveth ! Hath 
Christ said, Believe, and shall man say, Doubt? This is a 
rack and strappado to the conscience; for he that doubteth 
of his salvation doubteth of God's love, and he that doubteth 
God's love can not heartily love him again. If this love be 
wanting, it is not possible to have true peace. Oh the ter- 
I rors of this troubled conscience ! It is like an ague; it may 
! have intermission, but the fit will return and shake him. 
An untoward beast is a trouble to a man; an untoward 
| wife is a greater trouble ; but the greatest trouble of all is 
j an untoward conscience. Blessed is the man V\ hose sins are 
forgiven ; where there is no remission of sins, there is no 
blessedness. Now, there is no true blessedness but that 
which is enjoyed-: and none is enjoyed unless it be felt} and 
•t can not be felt unless it be possessed; and it is not pos- 
sessed unless a man know it; and how does he know it that 
doubts whether he hath it or not 7 " 



THE HOLY SPIRITS TESTIMONY, 135 

teaching salvation by the blood of Christ 
alone, a man may, like the Philippian 
jailer, " rejoice, believing in God with all 
his house," Acts xvi. 84, " in the same 
hour," in which Christ is presented as the 
sole object of personal faith and conse- 
quent reconciliation. 

There is, we regret to think, a large 
class of professing Christians who seem to 
have the unfounded notion ingrained in 
their minds, that Christ came as a Saviour 
in the fullness of time, and, on being re- 
jected and received up into glory, the Holy 
Spirit came down to be the Saviour of sin- */ 
ners in his stead, and that whether men 
are now to be saved or lost depends entire- 
, ly on the work of the Holy Spirit m them, 
and not the work of Christ done for them ; 
whereas the Holy Spirit was given as the 
crowning evidence that Jesus is still the 
Saviour, even now that he is in heaven ; 
and the great work of the Spirit is not to 
assume the place of Jesus as our Saviour, 
but to bear witness to Jesus Christ as the 
only Saviour, and by his quickening grace 
bring lost sinners to him, that they may 



186 TEE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

become " the children of God by faith in 
Christ Jesus," Gal. iii. 26. This he did on 
the blessed day of Pentecost, when thou- 
sands of divinely-quickened souls received 
his testimony, believed " in the name of 
Jesus," and obtained H remission of sins," 
Acts ii. 38. The Holy Ghost is not the 
Saviour, and he never professed to be so, 
but his great work, in so far as the uncon- 
verted are concerned, is to direct sinners 
to the Saviour, and to get them persuaded 
to embrace him and rely upon him. When 
speaking of the Holy Spirit, Jesus said dis- 
tinctly to his disciples, " He shall not speak 
\ of himself. .... He shall glorify me," 
John xvi. 13, 14. If to glorify Christ be 
the grand aim and peculiar work of the 
Holy Spirit, should it not also be the grand 
aim and constant work of those who be- 
lieve in him, and more especially of the 
ministers of his gospel ? 

The whole drift of the Holy Spirit's m« 
spired oracles, as we have them in the Bi* 
ble, is to glorify Christ; and the gospel 
ministry has been granted by him, Eph. iv. 
11, 12, to keep the purport of those Scrip- 



THE HOLY SPIRIT'S TESTIMONY. 137 

tures incessantly before the minds of men, 
and, in so doing, to beseech sinners to be^ 
reconciled to God. Now, Holy Scripture 
throughout clearly teaches that, simply on 
account of the one finished and all-suf- 
ficient and eternally efficacious work ot 
Christ, sinners who believe in him are 
« justified from all things ; " that we are 
« justified freely by his grace through the 
redemption that is in Christ Jesus ; whom 
God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in his blood," Rom. in. 24, 
25 ; and we are justified as « sinners, as 
« ungodly," Rom. v. 6, 8, and not as hav- 
ing an incipient personal righteousness 
wrought in us by the Holy Ghost. That 
is the doctrine of " the man of sin and son 
of perdition," 2 Thess. ii. 3 ; and yet, sad 
to say, it is the latent belief of multitudes 
of nominal Protestants. It is, in fact, the 
universal creed of the natural heart. Fal- 
len human nature, when under terror, 
says, Get into a better state by all means ; 
feel better, pray better, do better ; become 
holier, and reform your life and conduct, 
and God will have mercy upon you ! But 



138 THE BLOOD OF JESUS. 

grace says, "Behold, God is my salva- 
tion ! " Isa. xii. 2. To give God some 
equivalent for his mercy, either in the 
shape of an inward work of sanctification, 
or of an outward work of reformation, the 
natural man can comprehend and approve 
of ; but to be justified by faith alone, on 
the ground of the finished work of Christ, 
irrespective of both, is quite beyond his 
comprehension. But "the foolishness of 
God is wiser than men," 1 Cor. i. 25 ; for, 
( instead of preaching holiness as a ground 
of peace with God, " we preach Christ 
crucified," 1 Cor. i. 23, " for other founda- 
tion can no man lay"— either for justifica- 
tion or sanctification — " than that is laid, 
which is Jesus Christ," 1 Cor. iii. 11 ; and, 
whatever others may do, I am " determined 
not to know any thing among you, save 
Jesus Christ and him crucified," 1 Cor. i. 2. 

" my Redeemer, who for me wast slain, 

Who bringest me forgiveness and release, 
Whose death has ransomed me to God again, 

And now my heart can rest in perfect peace ! 
Still more and more do thou my soul redeem; 

From every bondage set me wholly free ; 
Though evil oft the mightiest power may seem, 

Still make me more than conqueror, Lord, in thee ! " 



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